Where do I start?
If you’re up to your eyeballs in credit card debt, how do you begin to get out from under that crushing load? It’s hard. It is so hard. But it’s not impossible.
Step one: STOP USING YOUR CREDIT CARDS. I don’t mean to be trite or simplistic. I understand it’s hard, but it simply is the one thing you need to do before doing anything else. Indeed, nothing else will help if you don’t take this one step. It doesn’t matter how hard or scary it is. You might say those credit cards are the only thing you have to fall back on and that may be true but it doesn’t change the situation. You can keep using the cards until the day comes when they’re all maxed out and you can’t get another one. And then what?
At that point you will be forced to stop using credit cards because no credit card company will be willing to lend you another dollar. So you can stop now or you can wait until outside interests force you to stop. Pick your poison.
I once heard of a man who put his credit cards in a plastic container full of water and then he put the container in the freezer. He knew where his cards were and knew he could get to them in a true emergency, but the logistical challenge of getting cards out of a block of ice was enough to keep him from using them on a regular basis. The man found a practical way to stop using his credit cards while still having access to them if he really truly needed them.
Maybe that’s not for you, but something else is. If you can’t go cold turkey by literally cutting all your credit cards in half then find a way to put them far enough out of reach so they’re really hard to use. Put them in a sealed envelop in a box on the top shelf of your hall closet that you can only reach from a stepladder. Put them on a shelf in the garage behind the croquet set that hasn’t been used in decades. Give them to a trusted best friend for safe-keeping. Figure it out.
Bottom line is this: if you wake up one morning and find yourself in a deep hole, stop digging. You owe it to your future self to do this now.