Help reduce debt? Try consulting

Help reduce debt — start consulting as a side job and you can help your family reduce debt. With household debt levels at $9,000 just for credit cards, it’s no wonder many people are looking for ways to pay down debts.

The best way to stop debt from accumulating is to stop using credit. Quit using credit cards and lines of credit. Reduce your expenses and start pursuing the best ways to pay down debt.

But what if your debt load is out of control? What if you don’t have the money to make your credit card payments? It’s hard to get out of debt if you can’t even pay for your groceries.

Debt and bankruptcy consultants often recommend returning unused items for refunds and holding yard sales to generate money. But if you’ve created your debt from intangibles like restaurant meals, trips, movies, music, alcohol and other things that just disappear, you may not have anything to sell or return.

A side job or work from home job can be a handy way to generate extra cash. And it’s often pretty easy to go pick up a minimum wage job. By working weekends, you could earn an extra $500 or so a month, depending on your minimum wage.

But, if you’re looking for a more lucrative means of paying down debt, think about becoming a consultant. You could be making $50 or $150 an hour. You could work fewer hours to pay down debt…or work more and pay it down faster.

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