How I Kicked the Credit-Card Debt Habit

Credit-card debt can stockpile for all kinds of reasons. Mine seemed innocent enough -- after all, I wasn't buying Manolo Blahnik shoes on a journalist's salary à la Sex and the City. Shopping trips didn't help, but neither did years of traveling to visit far-flung friends, multiple bouts of moving expenses while job hopping from city to city, and a stop for more education.

I also bought into the rhetoric that everyone has revolving credit debt. Why worry about having to pay now, when I could just pay later, right? It's not like we live in the Charles Dickens era of debtor's prisons.

In fact, in the eyes of my credit-card companies, I was a model cardholder. I had small balances sitting on multiple cards and always paid my minimum payments. Along the way, I did pay off some cards, and my credit score didn't suffer. But I never focused on completely erasing the debt.

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