If your expenses in life have been adding up, and have put you in debt, it can be a very worrying situation. You have creditors calling you wanting to know when you’ll pay them, you aren’t earning enough to pay off your debt, and you are constantly worried about your financial future.

It can be a very scary situation, which most people make worse by piling lots of debt onto credit cards but only paying off the minimum payments.

But let’s cut to the chase. You know you’re in debt. You don’t want a lecture, you want a way out. So this is what I’m going to help you with.

One of the most popular ways of getting out of debt is to take out a debt consolidation loan. This is basically a loan you can get from many financial institutions, where they roll all your debt into one monthly payment.

There are many benefits to this. Firstly, the interest rates will be lower compared to the interest rates of your credit card. Secondly, it will stop all the creditors from hassling you for their money. And finally, it will make your financial pressures much lighter, as you only have to worry about one payment each month that you should be able to afford.

When you take out a debt consolidation loan, the company you work with can help take a lot of financial strain out of your life. Even if you have multiple debts, ranging from credit cards, car loans, medical bills, education loans, whatever debt you have can be all conveniently put into one monthly payment.

As enticing as this sounds, its important to realise that your debt isn’t gone. It’s just arranged differently. You will be able to afford the payments (and you’ll save some money due to the lower interest rates) but you’ll have to pay off the loan over a longer period of time.

Debt consolidation loans can be a big help to you if you’re in a real financial mess. The only major downside is that it doesn’t change your spending habits for you.

So when you have some space left on your credit card, you may be tempted to start spending again. You may think you won’t, but it can be a very hard habit to break

The easiest way of overcoming this, is to only keep one credit card with you… and use it only for emergencies.