With household debt soaring nationwide, more and more families are looking for ways to reduce their debt load and also make it easier to understand. To this end, it’s widely recommended that you look into consolidating your loans into lower interest ones.

This can not only save you a good deal of money and make it easier to climb out of the hole, it can also reduce your stress levels over the money owed. Even when the amount owing is the same, it’s much less troublesome owing money to one source than it is owing money to four or five different sources.

Most credit cards now allow balance transfers, which makes the process of consolidating your loans into one source easier than ever. If your current cards just aren’t cutting it or don’t leave you with enough room to pull it all off, you can look into acquiring another lower interest rate card to handle it.

It’s important to take multiple factors into account when choosing which credit card to load up on. While the interest rate will probably be of the most importance, don’t forget to look into other costs and fees associated with the card as well, such as balance transfer fees, late fees, annual fees and others. A card which may have a slightly lower APR may not necessarily be the best choice.

This all ties in to your use of the card as well. If you’re the type that makes their payments each month or at least expects to, then the APR will probably outweigh any other fees. If you’re income or spending is unstable and you’re not guaranteed to make payments each month, then those late payment or other fees may outweigh the APR.

Of course other options exist as well, namely loans from other sources that can be used to pay off those credit cards or other credit debts. A personal loan from a friend or family member is absolutely ideal, as it would (presumably) be interest fee and with a flexible payment schedule.

It may be overly humbling or embarrassing to go this route, but there’s no shame in asking for help when you really need it. The important thing is to be honest about when you expect to be able to pay them back. Don’t set unrealistic goals that you’re bound to break and potentially interfere with their own financial plans, or even have it affect your relationship. If a loan of this type is out of the question you can try for a bank loan instead. Anything that makes sense financially should be pursued like a minimum APR credit card.

Most importantly is to stick with what works. The process of getting your debt into manageable levels is also the process you should apply to your routine afterwards. Stick with a minimum number of low interest cards, and be more cautious with more spending.

A common occurrence upon working so hard to pay down all that debt is that the consumer immediately runs back out and racks up the credit card bills. Why would you want to put yourself through that process again, not to mention all the extra money you’re flushing down the toilet in interest rates and other fees? Keep working to get that debt completely eliminated and then switch to your debit card if you can’t resist flashing some plastic.