Welcome to the Getting out of Debt Planner! This is the simplest way to get in control of your debt and pay it off. How can you get out of debt faster? Just pay it off faster! Yes, it sounds scary, but it is easier than you may think. What you have to do is increase your monthly payments. And you can achieve that by either decreasing your monthly expenses and/ or increasing your monthly income. This is where the Getting out of Debt Planner helps you. It takes you step-by-step through each stage, and it helps you stay aware and accountable of your finances. Firstly, you do an initial assessment. You list your current monthly expenses, and decide how/ if there is anything you can cut back on. The next step is to look at your monthly income and decide how/ if you can increase it. If you decide to increase your income, you will write a brief plan of what actions you will undergo each month to make that happen. And finally, you list all you debt categories, and decide which of them you'd like to pay off first. Now that you know where you are standing and you decided on a few changes, you move into month 1. List your total income, savings, expenses, and debt payments. As soon as income comes into your possession and/ or expenses take money from your possession, write it down immediately! The longer you wait, the more likely you are to forget about them. Writing these things down is a very important step to keep you knowledgeable about your finances, but also to keep you accountable for your spending. Let's say one week you spend too much money on eating out. As you write it down in this planner, you will know and plan to avoid eating out the following week. Following the initial assessments, there are a total of 24 monthly spreads, with spaces for nine different debt categories.