Digging yourself out of debt will undoubtedly serve as one of the most difficult financial hurdles you will overcome. Of course, once you find your way back out of it, it would make sense for you to avoid getting back into it at all costs.
To this end, you can take steps to improve your financial health and work toward keeping yourself out of credit card debt.
Avoid borrowing money you cannot repay
The Balance discusses ways that you can avoid credit card debt in the future. Most of these steps revolve around changing the way you view credit cards entirely. For example, in many cases, it is easy to fall into a trap of debt due to viewing credit cards as a way of borrowing money you do not have. If you do this, you cannot guarantee you will have enough to pay off your credit card bill when it comes around.
This leads to paying the minimum amount – or worse still, missing payments entirely. If you do this, you will stack up debt through interest rates, while still having the initial bill that you could not afford to pay off entirely in the first place.
Breaking the vicious cycle
Over time, this grows into a vicious cycle, in which you continue paying the minimum while struggling to keep up with new purchases, new bills and so on. The best way to avoid this cycle is by refusing it in the first place. You can do so by treating your credit card like a debit card instead.
Do not buy anything you cannot pay for with the money you currently have, whether it is in cash or in a bank account. This first step will take you a long way toward avoiding credit card debt.
