This article is part of a series on credit card debt reduction strategies. Visit the links at the end of this article to read about other debt reduction strategies to find one that’s right for you.

There are a lot of different credit card debt reduction plans you could follow. In some cases they involve paying off a specific type of credit card first, such as the card with the lowest balance or the credit card with the highest interest rate. Today we’ll talk about a different kind of debt reduction strategy — making flat rate payments on all of your credit card accounts.

A flat rate payment debt reduction plan is pretty simple. You decide how much up front you want to pay towards each credit card balance. That amount should be more than the minimum payment in every case.

Over time, your minimum payments would decrease as your balance decreases, but you would continue to pay the same amount every day. For example, you might pay $100 per month on a card with a $65 minimum payment due each month. As the debt is paid down, that minimum payment might drop to $50 per month, but you would still continue to pay $100 monthly until the debt is completely paid off.

Reasons to Consider Flat Rate Credit Card Payments

There are two primary benefits to the flat rate payment debt reduction strategy:

1. By paying more than the minimum due on every credit card, you also cut down on interest charged by every credit card company.

2. The process offers more simplicity than other strategies — you always know exactly what you’re going to pay on every card, and you know that you’re hitting your credit card debt from every angle at the same time.

The Downside of Making Flat Rate Credit Card Payments

While simplicity has its place, the flat rate credit card payment plan isn’t for everyone. Even though you’ll be decreasing interest on all cards, you’ll still pay more interest than necessary on your highest interest credit card.

In addition to not fully minimising interest payments, it can also take longer to finally pay off any single balance completely. You’ll still pay off all of your credit card bills faster this way than by making minimum monthly payments, but because you’re not focusing on any single card it will take a longer time to bring any individual balance down to zero.

An interesting aspect of this debt reduction strategy is that it can work in conjunction with other strategies. Your payments don’t have to be the same from one credit card to another. For example, if you have a $5000 balance on your Citibank Platinum Rewards credit card and a $1000 balance on your Suncorp Gold credit card, you might choose to pay $350 each month on the bigger balance card and $150 monthly on the lower balance card.

On the other hand, you could reverse that (as long as each payment is still more than the minimum due), paying off the smaller balance first. Basically you can combine this method with other strategies like paying off the lowest balance card first or the highest interest card first.

If this credit card debt reduction strategy doesn’t sound right for you, that’s okay! Check out the other posts in our series to compare this plan with other debt reduction plans:

•    Pay Off Lowest Balances First
•    Pay Off Highest Interest Cards First
•    Flat Rate Credit Card Payments
•    Balance Transfer Debt Consolidations

Whether you choose one debt reduction plan or find a way to combine them, the best thing you can do to get out of credit card debt is to come up with a system that works for you!