I’ve written about the subject of getting out of debt in the past, but because I frequently receive emails from people struggling with massive amounts of debt, I thought I would put together five steps for getting out of debt. These steps are more “big picture”-less procedural and more emotional. After all, until you get motivated to change you will simply spin your wheels.

1. Get angry

We go out of our way to repress anger in our society, but anger is a perfectly normal human emotion. An emotion that when harnessed properly can lead to powerful changes.

Find a way to personalize debt, and then get mad as hell at it. I hate debt for a lot of reasons, but a big one for me was the fact that debt limited my opportunities, and those of my family. My kids have missed out on opportunities to make lasting memories because we’ve had to skip family vacations. I had to stick it out in a soul-sucking career because we were too in the hole to consider moving. I spent many weekends mowing lawns a couple summers ago trying to generate extra income to pay down debt, all the while missing my family dearly.

At some point I said enough. I went from being indifferent, to depressed, to downright mad. That debt was not going to beat me. I would no longer ignore it while it festered, eating away at my future income and robbing my family of opportunity.

2. Stop spending money, cold turkey

When deep in debt you don’t have the luxury of saying things like, “I’ll try to spend less next month.” No, you WILL spend less next month. With the zeal of a heart attack survivor starting a new diet, prioritize your household expenses. Anything not contributing to food, shelter, transportation, health and basic clothing gets cut. Period. No excuses.

• Drop the cable
• Cancel home phone
• Cut out the gym membership
• Get rid of the yard service, the exterminator, and Netflix
• Turn up the thermostat
• Brown bag lunch
• Have a no-spend weekend
• Ride your bike to work
• Eat rice and beans

Get drastic. Get creative. The deeper you can cut spending the more money you can direct towards paying off debt. And the more money you can throw at debt the faster it gets out of your life.

3. Eliminate opportunities to go back into debt

Got a problem with credit cards? Cut them up. Order too much crap online? Erase all profiles storing order information and destroy anything with a credit card number on it. Have a thing for cars? Sell the one you owe $20,000 on, and buy a $1,500 piece of junk to get back and forth to work. You’ll discover true friends couldn’t care less what you drive.

Have trouble in stores? Stay out of them. Shop every other week as much as possible, and only enter the store with a physical list of things to buy. Exit store with only things from that list. No excuses. It doesn’t matter what’s on sale, what’s on clearance, and what you just “have to have!”

4. Focus income towards your debt like sunlight through a magnifying glass.

I recall from my youth that light from the sun when filtered through the lens of a magnifying glass and focused on a particular spot is strong enough to ignite a flame. That’s exactly how you should approach paying off debt.

Focus as much of your income as possible on the next debt in your snowball. That debt should be sweating like a guilty criminal under the bright lights of an interrogator. Work overtime, pick up a second job, start a side hustle. Do whatever it takes to get your income up and direct all additional income towards repaying your debt.

5. Do not backslide, do no retreat, do not give up.

At times, following through on your financial goals will seem like an uphill battle. For instance, sustaining momentum when paying off debt is very difficult. Quick wins give way to long battles with high-balance debt, and it might seem like you are getting no where fast. However, as long as you are making progress, keep chopping away.

Another danger presents when things start to go well. Complacency begins to creep in. You have paid off 75% of your debt, increased your income, and decreased your spending. Suddenly that $1,500 a month you are sending to pay off student loans starts to look pretty good on a television, or on that vacation you skipped the last two summers.

This is a dangerous place to be, because the more comfortable you feel, the more risk there is you will give up and live with that remaining 25% of debt for the rest of your life. Keep your head down, your legs driving and sprint all the way through the finish line. And no matter what, do not quit until all balances reach zero.

Stacy writes in with the following questions regarding getting out of debt:

Q: If you have a canceled credit card and its balance is the lowest should you work on paying that one off first or one that isn’t canceled? Also, would you work on paying over the credit limit cards or paying off payday loans first?  We have ideas but just aren’t sure where to start and attempt to tackle the debt.

A: Stacy, there are about as many ways of paying off debt as their blogs dedicated to the subject!  First of all, I commend you for taking control of your financial situation and eliminating the temptation to go even deeper into debt. The usual advice is to wait until your card is paid off to close it, because it can be detrimental to your FICO score to reduce the amount of credit available. Having said that, I’ve violated this advice myself and closed an account before paying if off because of the way the credit card company treated me.

From your question, it sounds like you have a variety of debts including a canceled credit card, an over-the-limit credit card or two, and some payday loans. The standard advice is to pay off the debts in the order of the interest rate – paying off those with the highest rates first. In my own experience, I have found that method of snowballing debt to be tougher to work through because of the lack of emotional reward returned.

I recently linked to an article over at Man vs. Debt about the Debt Tsunami method of paying off debt.  According to this debt snowball style you line up the debts giving priority to the one that is most emotionally charged. or gives you the biggest emotional boost when paid off. In your example, that might be the payday loans, or a personal loan that you’d like to clear from your list of debts. For me, it was my car loan, because since marrying my wife eleven years ago I’ve never known freedom from a car payment.

The other thing to consider is the fees associated with the over limit credit cards. Perhaps it makes sense to prioritize those first until the point that they are all safely under the credit limit and current. Then you can regroup and reorder your debts in the priority that works best for your situation.

Finally, there is no easy way out of debt. For me, the climb out of debt has taken more dedication, more perseverance, and more sacrifice than anything in my life up to this point. However, the rewards at the end are just as sweet. I suspect because you took the time ask for help with lining up your debts that you also have a gameplan for paying them off, and I have little doubt that you can do it. Let us hear from you again when you are debt free!

I was reading through some older posts on my favorite personal finance blog, The Simple Dollar, and I saw a post related to a debt snowball plan I’ve been wanting to employ myself. Trent calls it the “Scared Straight” snowball. Basically, the plan is to make minimum payments on all your debt and pile your remaining get-out-of-debt money into a high-yielding savings account. When the balance in that savings account exceeds the balance of your smallest debt by 30% transfer the money into checking and kill off that debt.

As Trent points out this is probably not the smartest (mathematically) way to approach the debt snowball, but for those of us with somewhat shaky jobs, or in one-income families, it makes for a better night’s sleep to have a few thousand in savings at any given time.

I may make one slight variation to his plan and preserve a $1,000 savings threshold – so when my savings balance equals my smallest debt + $1,000 I will bring the savings balance down to $1,000 and pay off the debt. Another idea to consider if you have several smaller debts (like I did in the beginning) would be to group those debts together to make one larger debt. For instance, I had three debts under $500. If I was using the “Scared Straight” plan back then I would have grouped them into one $1,300 debt and used that as my target savings amount.