So you have decided to go for credit card debt elimination and are wondering on what the methods for credit card debt elimination are. As they say, lets take the bull by its horns and lay it all flat on the ground.

Control your urge to spend: The first thing to do for credit card debt elimination is to control your expenditures. Here we are talking about the payments you make using your credit card. Remember that the main reason being your getting into credit card debt is uncontrolled expenditures using your credit card.

The bettering of teen credit card debt statistics would, as you must have guessed, start with education. This education has to start early in the life of the teens. Here we are not talking about just credit cards related education but the education about managing their finances in general.

Debt consolidation: Debt consolidation or moving from high APR credit cards to a low APR one is generally the first step (the first reactive step) for credit card debt elimination.

This can start with asking them to maintain a record of their pocket money and how they spend them. Also, engage them into education related to money management (of course, you have to customize the discussion to suit their level of knowledge and maturity).

The next step would be to open a bank account for them and teach them the various aspects of managing it. Teach them what debt it and when it is considered bad. Debit card could be the next step for them. Once they start becoming comfortable with doing their bank transactions by themselves, you can get a prepaid credit card for them (something that has a preset limit of $200-250). You could also use a low limit credit card (with $250 credit limit) and teach them how to use it.

Take stock of the situation i.e. draw up a table with the following fields ” Credit card name, balance, payment due day (the day of the month by which you are required to make payment of your credit card bill), APR, reward points earned, redemption offers applicable for your reward points balance, remarks.

Check if reward points can be used to make partial payments or cover any kind of fees or if the points can be bartered for something you need (spending less means preventing the credit card debt problem from getting worse).

I write often about finance related issues. Besides that Ive a few Dutch pages about hypotheek and autoverzekering