How did you get out of debt?

If you have good credit, go to your bank and ask for a line of credit. Use that to pay off your crediit cards immediately. Then do what dfriedman suggests to pay off the credit line. The credit line will have a much lower interest rate than the credit cards, especially if your credit is good.

About 15 years ago I had managed to get myself $40,000 in debt. I was considering bankruptcy and my father looked me in the eye and said that he would consider me a thief if I did that--I was not in debt because of some extraordinary life incident but because of bad money management, unconcious spending, "therapy" shopping, keeping up with the Joneses, a sense of being entitled to dinners out, expensive clothes, etc. His statement was the kick in the pants I needed. I signed up with https://www.cccssf.org/ in San Francisco (a legitimate non-profit service). They contacted all my creditors, set me up on a payment plan and I paid off the debt in 4 years. I got rid of all my credit cards except an American Express and my gas card because I was freelancing and used them to keep track of expenses. That's all I still have. Dad passed away before I finished paying everything off, but he knew I was on the right track. As everyone else has said, living within ones means is hard but freeing. It means not eating out several times a week. Shopping sales for clothes and really thinking about an expenditure. But I am soooo much happier. When an unexpected expense arises, I can handle it. When family or a friend is in a bind, I can help out. I have retirement savings, emergency savings and "fun" savings. I paid cash for my current car and am saving to pay cash for my next car. My credit score is in the high 700s and I know exactly how much I spend each month and on what. Money doesn't just "disappear" anymore. Whatever you do, I encourage you to stick with it and keep an eye toward the future. Also, in order to keep from going deeper into debt, I encourage you to set up a small savings account for emergencies and not put everything into paying off your debt. If need be, take on some side work just to build up a small amount of savings. Good luck.

I had a smaller amount of debt than you (about half) but nevertheless, I could never manage to pay off, and was sick thinking about how much I'd paid in interest for the privilege of that damn debt hanging over my head and sucking both money and guilt out of my paycheck. Believe it or not, Discover gave me a very reasonable deal on converting it to a personal loan. (I don't mean balance-transferring to a Discover card, http://www.discoverpersonalloans.com.) The interest is fixed and much lower than a credit card, I'm on a three-year plan that makes my monthly payment reasonable, and there's no pre-payment penalty. I've got about a year left. I'm sure that other banks do the same sort of deal, so shop around. It was hard for me to accept that it was going to take me three years to pay off that debt. I kept telling myself that if I was just really disciplined, I could burn through it a year. I transferred that damn debt several times to take advantage of different zero-intro-rate credit cards. This wound up not working for me. The problem is that devoting a very significant percentage of my take-home pay to the credit card only worked during some months, and it would get partially evened out by months during which I had to allocate a chunk of cash to my car insurance payment, or buying heating oil for the winter, or some other necessary cost. And then last fall, a lot of credit card companies jacked up minimum interest rates for even their really good customers. I wish I'd swallowed my pride and taken out a loan earlier. A little slower but steady is totally winning this race for me.

The strict answer to this question is "slowly and painfully." Obviously you know this and are looking for some more specific "tricks." Here's some of the things that helped make it possible for me. For one, I got some of the creditors to make me special interest rate deals. I called them up and said I was in over my head and having problems - what kind of deal could we make? Citibank was completely unhelpful and unwilling to do anything. FNB of Omaha was completely the opposite. They agreed to drop my rate to a sub-10% level in exchange for closing my account and setting up automatic payment. I'd realized that the key to getting this done was never spending money I didn't have so taking the deal was a no-brainer. Step 1.5 was using automatic payments to make sure everyone got their money every month. One of the biggest increases in my balances before I got my shit together was late fees and over-limit charges. Stopping those from happening anymore made a big difference. The final step also relates to that - it was setting those auto-payments at levels I could handle and not pushing too hard. Meaning: accepting the repercussions of my past actions. Once I got my head on straight and recognized how much it was costing me to owe that money it was horribly painful to see those charges. I wanted to pay it off as quickly as humanly possible. Once or twice I really got myself near disaster again by being too aggressive and not leaving myself any cushion. I realized then that it was more important to avoid ever being in that situation again than it was to pay an extra $1 in interest. So I started saving even though it offended me mathematically - I wasn't making the level of interest in the bank that those CCs were charging! But I was doing something more important: One, getting into a habit of saving money so I had it when I needed/wanted it. Two, making sure that I would not increase my debt through late fees or emergency charging. Good luck. I remember just how far away being out from under it felt. Don't let it get you down - once you get on a maintainable path it feels a lot better. Accepting it also helped. And nothing felt as good as the day it was all behind me.

You're a teacher, so you're probably in a credit union, right? Check if they offer a Debt Consolidation loan. I have had great success with this from my CU. Not only do you consolidate the debt to one payment with lower interest, but your credit score will go way up (because it's now non-revolving debt). It's been a really great solution for me.

One of the things that I did to get out of debt was to take a penny by penny look at my finances and trim away every piece of fat. Every dollar that didn't absolutely positively need to be spent was cut. I was surprised by how quickly it added up. Did I *really* need a cell phone? No. I switched to VoIP instead. That was nearly $80 monthly savings. I stopped eating out and started cooking at home. And I bought food in bulk. I actually hated buying food in bulk because the cost up front felt painful, but I quickly realized how much I was saving in the long run. I guarantee there are little purchases you make that you don't realize the true cost of. Do you buy paper towels? DON'T! Use cloth napkins when you eat and cheap rags for spills. Those are just a few examples. Long story short: I came up with an extra $300 a month to pay on the debt. Every dollar makes a difference. Best of luck to you.

Do you own a car that's worth something? I've heard you can get a used car loan against the value of your car and use it to pay down credit card debt. Presumably the rate would be much better than your credit cards.

Nthing Consumer Credit Counseling Service (in Dallas, cccs.net). I had well over $30k in credit card debt after my marriage ended (my ex said if I tried to assign any of the debt to him, he'd declare bankruptcy, therefore it would end up in my lap anyway...). I couldn't pay enough to meet minimums, even. They helped my interest rates (greatly) and I was out of debt in 3.5 years. It is one of the best decisions I ever made. Because some creditors didn't participate (meaning, they didn't lower interest rates), CCCS and I prioritized that debt first. You can tell them where you want the money to go if you are irritated at one bank or another for whatever reason, but otherwise they pay it in order of the highest interest rates. CCCS charged $19 a month. It saved me thousands of dollars. It's been 2 years of being debt free and I could not be more pleased.

I am doing this too! Hub and I each had a credit card around 10 thou - I read the book "http://www.amazon.ca/Smart-Cookies-Guide-Making-Dough/dp/0307356868" after finding it at the salvation army and it really turned my head around for whatever reason. Found that keeping a set amount of money in an envelope (for us, $200 for two weeks) on payday worked awesome. You ran out of money? Guess you're eating rice. Fun stuff. Sort of made it a game. We have one cc down, and the other halfway there. Never thought I'd be this far along on one income.