Folks often feel overwhelmed when it comes to credit card debt. Someone will amass 20,000 in credit card debt and suddenly they feel like they just can’t get ahead and that they are trapped in what seems a never ending pile of debt from which there is no escape.

Oddly enough, this same person may have a vehicle loan for the same amount but they don’t feel the same way about it. Why?

The reason is that the vehicle note has an end game. You know it will be paid off in 4 or 5 years and you watch the balance rapidly decline. So why doesn’t it work that way with a credit card?

The credit card company presents you with a lure with a nasty hook in it called the “minimum payment”. As you make payments on the card, this “minimum” will keep dropping and if you take the bait and make the minimum payment, you will have automatically extended the loan and the amount of interest you pay.

Credit card companies are now required by law to disclose the disastrous results of this and you will see it on the statement where it says “if you only make the minimum payment the balance will be paid off in 25 years” or something like that. It gets even worse if you charge anything else adding to the cycle of never ending payments.

It is very easy for a financial planner to get you out of credit card debt by simply setting up a schedule (like with the car payment) where you make the same payment over a fixed period of time to pay off the loan. Usually, the card is frozen or destroyed to make certain no additional purchases are made and sometimes a lower interest rate can be had just for the asking.

If you have a credit card balance that can’t be paid off each month, it is simply debt like any other and you should establish a plan to get it paid off. With a plan, you will find that you can get out of an even a seemingly impossible amount of debt fairly quickly.