One of the greatest challenges that many people confront when trying to repay credit debt is locating money to pay off debt. In order to repay your creditors, you must pay more than the minimum payment amount, yet this is often difficult to do when you find yourself having difficulty just making ends meet month after month.

So just how on earth do you find money to put towards your credit card bills every month? Allow me to share a few strategies:

Income tax return: Do you normally receive a big tax refund every year? If you do, then you should apply part of your income tax refund towards your credit card bills. Also, you ought to correct your withholding so that a lesser amount of income taxes are coming out from each check; it’ll give you a smaller tax refund, but you’ll have additional cash to apply towards your debt payments each month. The last thing you want to do is give Uncle Sam an interest free loan when you need money to pay off debt!

Borrow from friends and loved ones: Most people resist asking family and friends for money, but when you’re in too deep and you’ve got family members with the financial means to help you, this is definitely a solution you mustn’t ignore. If it helps assure your family that the debt will be paid back, you could draft a written contract to ensure that each person understands what to expect, and there’s no possibility for disagreements or difficult feelings later on.

Bonuses, raises and overtime: Whenever you receive a raise, bonus or get overtime, you should use at least part of those earnings to pay towards your credit card debt. Seeing as this is “extra” money that you did not have before, you shouldn’t miss the money that you put towards your credit card bills.

Sell things: An additional option would be to sell items to raise money. Hold a garage sale or possibly sell items you no longer need on Craigslist or eBay. Sell books that you no longer read on Amazon or Half.com. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much certain objects can sell for on an online auction!

Decrease spending: Despite the fact that this is listed last, this is probably the first step you should really take to find extra money to pay off debts. You should review your expenses to see if there are any areas that you could trim down to generate additional money to be paid towards your debt. Some typical areas that might be cut back on, at least in the short term, to help pay down debt include food (both groceries and dining out), entertainment (health and fitness memberships, newspaper subscriptions, cable, internet, trips to the book store) and personal care (haircuts, clothing, house cleaning, etc.).

These are only a couple of suggestions on how to get money to pay off debt. There are hundreds of different ways you can find money to use towards your debt if you are motivated to look for them.