Home, auto, personal loan EMIs: Borrowers alert! Best way to reduce debt-burden - What you need to know

There are host of loans that help us in times of financial aid. Personal loan is very easy and mostly help in emergency.  At the same time, there are home loan and vehicle loan which help us in buying our dream cars and houses. Loans have been gaining traction and play a major role in lives of urban citizens. While taking a debt is easy, but managing to repay it, is a burden. Majority of borrowers feel it difficult to repay debts. Hence, for these borrowers, here is a snowball method which helps them repay debt slow but steadily. 

Aditya Kumar, Founder & CEO Qbera.com said, "The Debt Snowball method was first proposed by Dave Ramsey as a debt-reduction strategy for people wishing to slowly but steadily pay-off their debt."

He adds, "The method holds relevance to individuals who have multiple debt accounts (usually in the form of multiple credit cards or loan accounts), and wish to employ a prudent strategy to become debt-free.  The snowball method has been looked at as a highly effective way to clear debt, especially for individuals you have multiple credit accounts to their name."

In Kumar's view, there are predominantly two popular methods that are usually suggested by experts to repay debt – the Debt-Snowball Method and the Stack Method. Each of these methods has its own advantages, and is applicable for different quantum.

Here's how you can clear your debt using the snowball method, as per Kumar.

To begin with, make a list of all your debt, starting from the smallest to the largest. Don’t worry about your large debts just yet - the snowball method is effective in theory and practice.

If you have a credit card or multiple credit cards, make the minimum payments on all your accounts, but don’t make the minimum payment on your smallest debt just yet.

With the amount that you have remaining from your monthly income, throw in as much money as possible towards clearing the smallest debt – you might not be able to clear this debt within the first month, but in about 2-3 months, you can eliminate your smallest debt and completely close at least one debt account.

Once you pay-off your smallest debt, move on to the next smallest debt. Put in as much as you can towards eliminating your next smallest debt while also making minimum payments towards other credit accounts.

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It needs to be noted that, the Debt-Snowball Method, as much as it involves managing your debt and prioritizing debts based on their volume (smallest to largest), it also involves saving money month-on-month and use it to make large bullet payments towards debt accounts.

Experts argue that while employing the Snowball Method, while saving as a habit is almost always important, it is important that you minimize your monthly spending to free-up a larger portion of your available funds.

As and when you keep clearing your smallest debts one by one, the amount of money available to pay larger debts will increase in quick-time, and sooner or later, your debt will come rolling-down like a snowball, rendering you debt-free! The theory also touches upon aspects of human psychology, with people often feeling glad whilst they shoot down their debt one account at a time.