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With Halloween approaching, TV stations and movie channels are showcasing their horror movie collection and I was reminded of a few important facts:
- If you are alone in your house at night and you start hearing scary theme music, don’t go outside to “check something out”. It never works out for you.
- Silver bullets kill werewolves.
- Vampires don’t like crucifixes or stakes through the heart
- Zombies are everywhere.
But how exactly do you kill a zombie? I actually didn’t know but now thanks to the internet I do! Just Google “how to kill a zombie” and you will find pages and pages on the topic. Turns out, there isn’t one way but several ways to kill zombies and every zombie film director seems to have their favorite. Some of the more common ways to kill a zombie are hitting them with a car, lighting them on fire, shooting them or bashing in their head.
What about financial zombies? That is how I think of credit card debt that just won’t die.
Just when you think you killed one (i.e. paid if off), here comes another one crawling out of your purse or wallet chanting in their zombie voice “sppeennddiing…sppeennddiing…we want sppeennddiing” and unlike a werewolf or vampire, there is no universally accepted way to kill either a financial or undead zombie.
Some people suggest putting your credit card in the freezer so you don’t use it. Others suggest creating a spending budget, paying only with cash, paying off the card with the highest interest rate first, paying off the card with the smallest balance first, or only carrying only one card. All of these are good, practical ways to kill the financial zombies but they don’t work for everybody. Find the strategy that works for you and stick with it.
Remember financial zombies will stop at nothing to take over your life.
Before you leave here are a few facts about credit card debt:
- Average credit card debt per household with credit card debt: $15,956 (Source: CreditCards.com)
- Average interest being charged on credit cards with a balance: 12.78%, as of November 2011 (Source: Federal Reserve’s report on consumer credit, released January 2012)
