The first step, then, to get on the winning end of interest, is to sit down and figure out just how far our bad interest has spread, where it's located, etc. We have to do this in detail, exhaustively if we're going to get on the winning end of interest. Bad interest comes from debt. Probably, we have debt in more than one place, on more than one credit card. But we'll have to make a complete journey if we want to get on the winning end of interest. Getting on the winning end of interest, in other words, will take considerable work, time, and patience-initially. It's like getting rid of an addiction. In AA, the first few months of following the program in detail are difficult, more than difficult, one doesn't believe one can do it. But suddenly, those few months have past, and one finds oneself not only struggling less hard with the program, one's actually beginning to enjoy it as well. Such is the case with getting on the winning end of interest.
So, we've located all our bad interest, documented the rate it's growing, etc. Now it's time to prioritize. If one source of bad interest is speeding slimily along, swelling all the time, while another is more sluggish (but still slimy, slugs being what they are), we've got to take action on the former first, that is, make a careful budget sacrificing all non-essentials and using the extra income to block, thwart, hassle, wound, the more speedy thus more injurious budget. You don't ignore its sluggish brother; you just pour salt on him rather than blasting him with a flame thrower. That's a gruesome way of looking at it, but it fits. Some forms of interest require more energy, investment, and so forth than others, and we've got to adjust our energies accordingly.
That's one way of doing things. Happily, these days there are more and more choices for consolidating debt, that is, taking the fast interest and the slow interest and combing them into something in between. The great advantage of this strategy is that the enemy is forced to make camp in once place, and, sticking with the military imagery, you therefore save wear and tear and fuel and so forth on your fighter jet.
Really going after our bad debt is the main step to consider when shooting for the winning end of interest. But perhaps we're doing OK, debt-wise, and we simply want to make good interest work for us. We want to find means, for example, of using our credit cards to add to our benefits rather than subtract from them, we want to maximize the interest accruing in our bank accounts etc., we want to spend money to make it. We're always hearing about how such and such a credit card will reward us with such and such goodies if we use them. We're always hearing from different banks about their unique ways of arranging our interest for our good, and the list goes on.
The next step, then (if we're swamped by bad debt; the first step if we're not) is to do some research. We need to follow the claims listed above and see where they lead. We need to compare one credit card with another, our current bank with one that seems to have better features, and so on. If it's true that X is better than Y, and we're currently using Y, a switch is in order.
Remember, even those of us dealing fighting bad interest can enlist the help of good interest simultaneously. The last thing we'll consider her is the possibility of using an accounting firm, a debt specialist, and so on, to ensure that we get started on the right foot. We'll pay a little more money to begin with, but it goes with the old saying, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man a fish, feed him for a lifetime." A difficult investment now, in other words, will make then (a much longer span than now) quite a bit less difficulty, and may even remove it as a difficulty altogether, so that our focus can be strictly on the winning ends of interest.