Start with the full picture, not the panic

Most people who feel stuck with debt are not actually short of good intentions. They are short of a plan. When you owe money to several places at once, the mind tends to jump between them — a bit extra here, a minimum payment there — and somehow the total never seems to shift. Before you decide anything about strategy, you need to see every balance in one place. Not in your head, and not across four different banking apps you open one at a time.

Find a quiet hour, make a cup of tea, and write everything down. A plain sheet of paper is genuinely fine. Then for each debt note four things: the lender, the total balance, the interest rate (the APR), and the minimum monthly payment. Add the credit card you keep meaning to deal with and the Buy Now Pay Later plan you took out last winter. Leaving something off the list does not make it disappear; it just makes your plan less honest.

What each column is really telling you

Once the list is complete, the numbers start to do some of the thinking for you. Here is what to look for:

• Interest rate — how fast the debt grows if you do nothing. A card at 24.9% APR is far more expensive than a personal loan at 7%, even if the balances look similar.
• Balance — the size of the job. Smaller balances can be cleared quickly and give you a genuine boost.
• Minimum payment — your monthly obligation. Know the total, because it is the floor your budget has to cover every single month.
• Type of debt — cards, overdrafts, loans and catalogue credit all behave differently, and some are more flexible than others.

Add up the balances for a grand total, and add up the minimums for your monthly baseline. That baseline figure is the most important number in this whole exercise. Everything else builds on it.

Two ways to clear debt, and how to choose

There is no single correct order, only the order that you will actually stick to. The two approaches are usually called the snowball and the avalanche, though the names matter far less than the maths behind them.

The smallest-balance-first method (snowball). You pay the minimum on everything, then throw every spare pound at the smallest debt until it is gone. You then roll that payment onto the next smallest. The interest saved is not maximised, but the psychology is powerful: you get a finished debt early, and that first win keeps you going. If you have ever abandoned a repayment plan after six weeks, this is often the better choice.

The highest-interest-first method (avalanche). You pay the minimum on everything, then attack the debt with the steepest interest rate. This costs you the least overall and clears the debt fastest in pure mathematical terms. It can feel slow, though, if your most expensive debt is also your largest. You may go months before seeing a balance vanish.

If your expensive debts are small, the two methods overlap and the decision is easy. If they pull in opposite directions, be honest about which matters more to you: the cheapest outcome, or the quickest sense of progress. Both are legitimate. The plan you follow beats the plan you admire.

Build the plan around your real budget

Now work out what you can genuinely send towards debt each month. Not what you wish you could send. Take your income, subtract rent or mortgage, council tax, utilities, food, transport, insurance and any essential commitments, and see what remains.

If the answer is very little, do not force an unrealistic figure. Set the minimums, add whatever small amount is truly spare, and protect it. Even £20 a month extra, paid consistently, changes the arithmetic. As your circumstances shift — a pay rise, a finished subscription, a cheaper energy deal — increase the amount rather than absorbing it into general spending.

• Set up a standing order for the day after payday, so the money moves before you can spend it.
• Keep one small buffer for emergencies, so an unexpected bill does not go straight onto a card.
• Review the plan every three months, not every three days.

Make it survivable, not heroic

The best repayment plan is boring and repeatable. Pause any subscriptions you are not using, check whether your existing debts could be moved to a lower rate where that genuinely saves money, and build a modest emergency fund alongside repayments rather than after them. Declaring a frugal month and then burning out helps nobody.

Write your target date on the sheet and stick it somewhere visible — the fridge door works well. Cross off each cleared debt as it goes. Simple, visible progress is what keeps a plan alive long enough to finish the job.