Suppose you make a $3,000 purchase using your credit card. The card has an annual interest rate of 18%. If you only pay the required 2% minimum monthly payment of $60 per month, it will take you a full eight years to clear your bill

In fact, paying only the minimum requirement each month is a recipe for drawn-out debt despair. But if you nudge your monthly contributions up by just a little bit on each bill -- say, $50 -- the long-term results can be phenomenal. It is in this area of your life that you can really enjoy "savings." Why not take advantage of it?

An example of what $50 can do
If you have a credit card with a $3,000 balance at an annual interest rate of 18%, and you pay only the 2% minimum monthly payment of $60 per month, it will take you a full eight years to clear your bill. Think about that before you HAVE to BUY that item! What's more, that $60-a-month-for-eight-years payment means you will have paid $5,780 for your purchases -- not the $3,000 you thought they cost when you considered buying them in the store. Going the minimum-payment-only route, then, could mean paying almost twice the original debt, once your obligation is finally discharged.

BUT if you can kick in just $50 more a month to your credit-card payments, for a total payment of $110 instead of $60, you can pay off that debt in less than half the time. In just three years, your $3,000 balance will be history. AND you will have saved yourself $1,800 in interest payments.

Just $50 a month, as it turns out, can be quite a powerful thing. Imagine what you could do with $100 more per month!