[TLO]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Good for you for making a turnaround. My quick advice is that paying interest is your enemy. Sort your debts by the interest rate, then try to find a way to convert them into lower interest rates via other types of financing. Then pay off the highest remaining interest rate debt first, putting all of the money you can against it. Then roll those payments into the second highest once you get it paid off.

I think a good rule for debt is to avoid it unless you're purchasing something that will give you a greater return than that debt. That generally means you should borrow only for education or job training, buying a home, or starting a business, and really nothing else. (Yeah, sometimes you might have to borrow for a car if you don't have cash for it. But if it gets you to a job it kind of counts in the same way.)

Originally Posted by DaFace

The flow chart linked in the OP is a good road map for the long-term, but in short, Rain Man's advice is a good place to start. To expand on a couple things:

1. It's probably worth going through the exercise of putting together a monthly budget. List out your total (after tax) income, all of your bills that you can't get rid of (rent, gas, electric, etc.), stuff you could potentially get rid of (e.g., cable), and then take a close look at what's left and how you're spending it. If you truly want to get out of debt in a reasonable amount of time, you may have to shift your spending habits to make it work. It'll suck, but otherwise it's gonna take a really long time to get through $50k in debt on a $35k salary.
2. On that note, you need to figure up how much this is all costing you in interest each month. You MUST be putting more toward your loans than that amount or you're just going to keep digging a deeper hole. The more, the better, obviously.
3. Rain Man alluded to this, but you may want to look into ways you can reduce the interest rates you have. For student loans, check into refinancing. (I've heard good things about SoFi.) For credit cards, you can try to find a new card that has an 0% intro APR on transfers and just move things around for a couple years. For medical debt, it's tough to say since that can take a wide variety of forms, but if it's debt directly to the hospital, you can try to negotiate it down outright. Here's an article that describes the options better than I can.

In short, you've got a bit of a battle ahead of you, so it's important to take a long-term view. It'll seem insurmountable at first, but slowly if you make a plan and stick to it, it'll start going down. The way this stuff works is that it takes forever at first, but it'll speed up as you start reducing the amount of interest you're paying each month.

Good luck. Feel free to ask for advice on specific components of what you're working with.

These posts seem chock full of good advice.

I'm going to sit down and make a budget this evening, and also look into which bills are carrying the highest interest rate.

I'll report back tomorrow with a battle plan and see what you guys think.

Thanks for taking the time to enlighten me a bit. I'll report back soon.