Simplify Your Debt: DIY Consolidation Methods That Save Money

Fancy paying one simple consolidated payment for all your debts without the high price tag?

So How Would a DIY consolidation Even Work Anyway?

Before we start, can I please ask; why do you want to consolidate your debts in the first place?

Debt consolidation is generally only a good idea when it’s going to cost you less in interest over the term, or if you’ve exhausted all your other options, NEVER if you just want more money to spend by reducing your monthly payments.

If however you have debt that is charging you high interest every month and you’re getting stressed out about it, you want it to feel less “messy” or you simply have to reduce your monthly outgoings asap, then there are a few alternative solutions.

Whilst the traditional consolidation loan approach might not be th answer for you at this time, anouther route would be to take the following 3 steps.

Resctructure your debts – i.e. list them all, get the most costly onto 0% cards or low cost loans
Open a second current (or checking) account and pay in the amount that you want to use to pay off your debts. i.e. if your new minimum payments come to $445 and you have $600 to throw at your debts monthly, put the $600 via a regular payment set up (or direct debt) with your bank
Set up all your regular payments (standing orders direct debits etc) for ALL your debt and ONLY your debt to go out of this new account.

Et voila! you have a single monthly payment going out of your main account as you would if it was a consolidation loan BUT you’ve restrucutred all your debts onto 0% or low cost credit so you are paying WAY less than with a loan.

To decide where your extra money should be going, list all your debts in the free debt management spreadsheet. I’d recomend using the avalanche method to pay the highest interest card or loan down first (check this case study to see how this works) so that it’s paid sooner and costs less money overall.

The one thing you will need to go is go into your account and send the “surplus” cash to the card you’re paying down.

So if you’re paying off 3 cards, they each have a minimum payment of $100 each month that means your total minimum is $300 right? So if you’ve decided to throw $600 at your debt you have $300 ($600-$300) to pay off you’re most costly debt.

This means that you will need to either adjust the standard monthly payment to this card to make a manual payment every month. I’d recomend automating it so that you don’t forget!

Restructure your debts with 0% credit

In order to source the best cards out there at any given time, go to a few comparison sites to check out the latest deals and apply for the ones with the longest 0%. If possible select the cards that allow you to see if you will be accepted BEFORE you apply. This means that there won’t be a hard search on your credit record. You don’t want too many of these, it makes you look bad.

Please remember that most of these sites (if not all!) get paid to refer you so check a few to get a full picture before you decide. (Please note that some of the links I include here will also pay me a small commission for referring you to them)

If you have quite a bit to transfer, go for cards will give you the most, (as you will need less cards to service your debt) then compare the transfer fees with how long the 0% runs for.

To know which card to switch first, download our free workbooks so that you have a good clear picture of all your debt and can easily see the most expensive ones.

When looking for a new card, make sure you take into account how long the 0% term lasts for and how much the transfer fee is. These might all be 0% but there is still a cost.

These figures are not strictly accurate as you will be paying it off with minimum payments over the term, but for comparison purposes it’s there or there about.

Card Name	Card Limit	Transfer fee	Term of 0%	Average % p.a.
NEW Card 1	$5,000.00	2.90%	24 months	1.45%
NEW Card 2	$2,000.00	1.90%	18 months	1.27%
NEW Card 3	$1,000.00	4.20%	36 months	1.40%

Focus on getting your costs down before you look at consolidating the payments

Unless you are struggling to make all the monthly payments, your primary focus should really be on getting your interest payments as low as possible so that you can throw every piece of available cash at your debt and actually bring the overall balance down. Once you have done this look at the DIY consolidation method to bring it all together.

If however you have had a change in income due to a global pandemic for example, and simply need to reduce your monthly payments, then you might have to go with a traditional debt consolidation loan or similar programs. Take a look at this article for some comparisons.

Assuming that you can make the monthly repayments but want to reduce your costs and you manage to get at least one 0% card, transfer the balance from the card with the HIGHEST INTEREST rate over to the new one. You can usually use about 90% of your new available balance on a transfer. So if your new card has an available balance of $1000, you can use $900 for a transfer. The transfer fee is applied immediately and I STRONGLY recommend, in fact I insist that as soon as you activate the card you set up a direct debit for the minimum payment at the same time as If you fail to pay they will usually withdraw the 0% offer.

I hope that it goes without saying that you should NEVER actually use this card for purchases. If you did use it after you’d transferred a balance (assuming there is no additional deal for interest free purchases) you will pay interest on anything you buy.

So let’s say you manage to transfer $5k to a 0% card, you pay the balance transfer fee and you set up an automated regular bank payment for the minimum every month, everything is well with the world.

At this point; put the card in a safe place and walk away!

If for some reason you don’t do this and you spend say $100 on the card, this spend is NOT interest free and any payments you make might ONLY go off the 0% balance! That $100 sits there generating interest COSTS every month and there is a high probability that only a small proportion of your payments will touch it until the entire 0% balance is cleared.

Ok so that’s done, but maybe you still have some costly balances on the old cards that you didn’t manage to transfer.

Other Options

Another way can be to look for lifetime balance rates. These often are free balance transfers that will charge you a % say about 6.9% for the life of the balance. Not as good at 0% but very probably better than what you are paying now, so look at these next.

If you have any cards that you are not using and are empty but you never got around to cancelling them (this can be very good btw), it might be worth getting in touch with them to see if they have any offers on for transfers or purchases, always worth a punt.

However; if you still need more, ring your existing provider and say that you are going to transfer a balance as you’ve found a better deal and ask them what they can do for you before you take your business away from them. I would suggest that you DO NOT say that you are having trouble paying, I’ve heard stories where this has been akin to kiosk Keith dropping the shutter on any possible good rates coming your way for the foreseeable future! (My apologies for the “I’m a Celebrity…” reference!)

Quite often I have found that when I pay off a balance from a card and leave it dormant for a while they start to send me new offers. Being a little patient might also serve you well here. If you use a 0% card to pay and existing card off in full, wait a bit and see if the original card provider gives you any offers (or call them?) you could then use this for any other balances you still have.

Loan and re-mortgage options are of course more expensive. But if you’re interested in these click here.

Methods to pay down your debt

There is a debt reduction method called “the snowball method”. (see our Avalanche vs Snowball analysis HERE) The suggestion is that you pay off the smallest balance first. Many people use and even recommend this method because it gives people a sense of progress when clearing down their debts. It’s crazy if you ask me – I’d always go for the most expensive first but I think this human nature aspect of being able to really SEE your progress is part of the reason why people feel better consolidating into a loan or mortgage, even though it costs far more in the long run. It’s all psychological!

DIY Consolidation

I totally understand why one payment feels better, and why so many people jump into consolidation loans without really considering the longer term cost of that choice.

So why not do it for yourself by opening a totally separate current (chequing) account. This way you won’t be paying out huge sums of money on consolidation loans if you don’t need to.

I personally have a 2nd current account for this purpose and I strongly recommend that you do this too, especially if you have lots of small payments going to various institutions and it all feels a bit messy and stressful.

Advantages of a 2nd account just for debt payments;

You might get money for opening a new account (cherching!)
- Note here I’m not recommending switching – just opening a new one so you might not get this kind of bonus.
You should try to open one that gives you interest on your balance (more cherching!)
You can have ONE single payment from your main chequing account into the second one which makes it feel neater and consolidated.
You are not tempted to spend any “spare cash” as it’s already been “spent” on the debt as it’s now sitting in the NEW account, not the normal one that you use every day.

If you have managed to move all your expensive cards to 0% then just pay what you would have normally paid against your entire debt into this account and let the balance stack up so that when the cards run out of their 0% you can pay them off. This way you are not tempted to spend the money you are not paying out in interest.

For example, if you were spending $120 per month in interest on your cards, by switching to zero or lower % charged cards, you can now use that $120 (or a good chunk of it) to pay off your balances! Good eh?

The aim of the game here is to achieve AT LEAST the same value in assets as we have in debt so until you achieve this equilibrium, you are still in debt. DO NOT spend anything that looks like its left over.

The spreadsheet we have developed for this purpose can be downloaded for FREE here – this will show you how close you are to getting your debts and assets in balance. Believe me; it makes you feel so much better than just looking at the mountain of debt!

Also, if you have any debts that are still charging you (or just charging more than you’d like), you can use the residual balance at the end of the month to pay these down. i.e. if your minimum balances were costing you a total of $400 per month but now because you’ve done a master juggling act, they only cost you $350, you can pay the extra $50 off your most irksome debts.

Psychologically I thing that this structure helps you to track your progress and make clear strides towards a defined goal, which in my mind has to meet 2 criteria:

Never pay interest (that’s more than you can earn from that same pocket of cash)
Always have at least as much in assets as you do in good debts

Moving Debt to a Mortgage

This is not something that I would normally recommend but if you have tried everything else, this might be your last (ish) resort so let’s see what this might do for you.

A lot of people have quite a narrow short term focus when they add their expensive debts to their mortgage, they see their monthly outgoings reduce, which of course is brilliant because they now think that they can spend more, but keeping your mortgage over the long term even though the rate is low, really does rack up the interest. 2.5% per year is a decent rate for a short term credit card but the miracle of compound interest works against you over the long term if that’s your mortgage interest rate.

Just adding \$10k to your mortgage over say 15 years could cost you and extra \$2k, that’s assuming you have a repayment mortgage, it’s closer to \$3.8k if you’re on interest only.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge advocate for low cost credit but ONLY WHEN you are saving that money in another HIGHER INTEREST pot, it’s all about the balance. If this is your last resort to get rid of expensive debt, then so be it but be careful that you don’t clear your debts with a re-mortgage and then think you have money to spend, the chances are that you don’t. Low interest credit and consolidated debt is never a licence to spend more money that you still don’t have.

If you have already consolidated your debts and are tied in to something, don’t panic, just start putting the amount you are saving by consolidating in a decent savings or investment account, at least this way you are moving forward instead of treading water, or worse – going down!