How to crush your holiday debt

You can also use budget apps like Mint and You Need a Budget to automatically track your spending by category, says Jeff McDermott, a certified financial planner in Saint Johns, Florida.

“That just gives somebody a baseline to get a sense of, ‘What do I normally spend? What sort of cash flow should I have to start paying down some of this debt? Are there things that I’m overspending on that I should be able to reduce a little bit to free up some cash to attack the debt?’” McDermott says.

Once you have a solid understanding of how much you owe and what your budget is, make a repayment plan. You’ll pay off your holiday debt sooner if you make more than the minimum monthly payments.

McClary suggests using online debt calculators or tools to estimate your debt-free date. “You can test out strategies of adding different amounts to the minimum payments to see how quickly it would pay off.”

If you’re unable to pay beyond the minimum on multiple debts right now, it’s OK to tackle it one at a time. There are two main methods for prioritizing repayment: debt snowball and debt avalanche.

With debt snowball, you pay extra on the debt with the smallest balance first, while making the minimum payments on others. Once you’ve erased that debt, roll the amount you were paying into paying off the next-smallest debt, and repeat. With debt avalanche, you focus on the account with the highest interest rate first.