this article is reprinted by permission from nerdwallet in this series nerdwallet highlights people’s debt payoff journeys this month kenley young recounts how he combined lots of tools for cutting debt with knowledge he gained working at nerdwallet to wipe out credit card debt in the first week of 2022 i checked off a longrunning new year’s resolution i paid off the more than 20000 in credit card debt i’d owed for about two decades it was far from an overnight success i didn’t really start attacking my debt in a deliberate way until the summer of 2016 fiveplus years later by the time i zeroed out my balances across those two credit cards it felt like i’d exhausted every trick in the book even acknowledging my struggles with debt makes me selfconscious i work at nerdwallet so shouldn’t i have been able to avoid this well i know more now than i did five years ago including just how difficult it can be to avoid credit card debt as major life events unfold here’s how i racked up my debt how i attacked it and the tools that made the most difference my debt journey started in the early aughts with an 1800 martin guitar i couldn’t afford once i justified that purchase on a meager newspaper salary it was no sweat to rationalize travel furniture rounds of drinks whatever but guitars and guinness are one thing well two things technically then came the house the engagement ring the honeymoon the vet bills for a very sick dog the crosscountry move to los angeles for a new job the la rent the two children the day care invoices i had no emergency fund—or any savings to speak of so i leaned on credit cards i was drowning in debt in an expensive city maybe it was the afternoon i found myself driving the streets of west la scanning gutters for aluminum cans to turn in for pennies but at some point it dawned on me that extreme frugality alone wasn’t enough the steps i took from there included in the summer of 2016 my family and i moved from los angeles one of the most expensive cities in the world to columbia south carolina a city routinely recognized as one of the most affordable in the country before i get too far with this tip i need to acknowledge my privilege and the fact that simply packing up and leaving town is not a possibility for everyone uprooting yourself can be painful and prohibitively expensive we not only lost my wife’s 40000 salary when we left town but the move itself cost thousands of dollars we paid for it by liquidating a life insurance policy that my wife’s late grandfather had put in her name long term though it made sense i’d gotten a new higherpaying job that allowed me to work remotely and despite the temporary net loss in household income we had a soft place to land my wife and i are from south carolina and our families are here we had a village to help us get on our feet for the first eight months in fact we lived rentfree with my gracious and accommodating inlaws that’s a safety net that not everyone has now that we have our own place in charleston we’re paying a mortgage it just happens to be 1000 cheaper a month than our la rent those savings on housing costs were what made the biggest difference even as our household income had initially shrunk to 95000 also see the 5 best —and affordable —places to live in california and the best and most affordable places to live in florida counterintuitively the secondmostimportant weapon in my credit card debtzapping arsenal was…another credit card but this one had a superpower a 0 introductory apr on balance transfers for 21 months i moved a large sum to it from an existing card with a doubledigit apr so as i chipped away at that balance for nearly two years none of my payment was wasted on interest it was a step i used repeatedly with similar card offers some caveats about balance transfer credit cards though   you’ll usually need at least good credit scores of 690 or higher to get one even though i had significant debt i’d never missed a payment and had a long credit history thus my credit scores were in good shape   you can transfer balances only up to the new card’s credit limit and you usually won’t know what that is until you’ve applied   you’ll typically owe a fee often 3 to 5 of the transferred balance so “parking” debt on these cards letting it sit there without paying it off until interest resumes is counterproductive also read suze orman says to do this right now if you’re worried about inflation in another life i was a singer and guitarist in a rock band we broke up long ago but i held on to live music as a hobby i also held on to much of the gear i now use for side gigs my typical solo acoustic gig pays 150 to 200 and on a good night tips can add an extra 75 or so to my haul i’ve also set up a digital tip jar so patrons who don’t carry cash can slide me a fivespot through venmo in a good month i’ll book two to four gigs so conservatively that’s at least an extra 300 a month that i once put toward my debt and now drop into a highyield online savings account tax refunds christmas gifts escrow overages you name it i threw it at my debt of course as a parent and a homeowner these windfalls have all kinds of tempting uses so prioritization is key i had a lot of wants but the biggest was getting out of debt we bought our home in 2017 and i’ve since refinanced our mortgage twice and paid off a car loan that saved us a chunk each month but smaller cuts helped too we ditched cable found cheaper home and auto insurance got a better deal on our cellphones unsubscribed from monthly services like newspaper delivery sling tv and more read ‘i am a 53yearold single man with very little savings’ i want to take out a 30year mortgage but pay it off in 7 years is that possible yes credit cards got me into this jam but my new job taught me a lot about them and i knew that using cards strategically would reap benefits my credit was good enough to qualify for a rewards credit card which i used for necessary purchases like groceries and gas i paid off whatever i put on that new card immediately so it didn’t add to my debt then used the rewards to help pay down what i still owed when i learned about “doubledipping” using a rewards credit card on a cashback website to earn both the card’s and the site’s rewards i was hooked my most frequented sites when i shop online are topcashback and rakuten but i always check the cashback monitor aggregation site to make sure i’m getting the highest rates i also joined a website called mypoints which lets you take surveys or snap photos of receipts for points that you can redeem for money i now save receipts religiously and submit them to a variety of cashback apps ibotta fetch and upside to name a few in addition i used an app called qoins which lets you round up purchases to the nearest dollar and put the difference into an account at the end of the month qoins mails that balance minus a fee to your creditors read personal savings are being depleted as americans cope with redhot inflation people are being forced to make ‘difficult choices’ a triedandtrue way to make quick cash sell some stuff on craigslist i focused on popular and highmargin items mostly electronics and musical equipment but also kids’ toys and bikes some kid out there now has a decent handmedown guitar she can smash to bits on stage one day and it wasn’t just merch i unloaded many holiday seasons i received a gift card to a store i rarely frequented it’s the thought that counts of course but on many occasions my main thought was “if only i could liquidate this thing” good news many online exchanges let you sell unwanted gift cards for cash although you won’t get full face value see three expert tips for a successful moneymaking yard sale so now what after eliminating credit card debt i can focus resources elsewhere my wife and i have started a monthly budget and track our spending we’re setting goals for travel home improvement investing and saving our discussions aren’t always easy talking about money especially debt rarely is but i found that confronting my debt and being honest with myself about it made the process easier   25 ways to make money online offline and at home