As promised here are Money Saving Expert - Martin Lewis' top four tips, which I have solemnly sworn to stick to, to put your credit card debts back in the black.
1 Clinically assess you finances: Collate old bank statements and calculate what you actually spend and earn. If you're still overspending, fixing your current debt isn't enough. Look at the whole year- to allow for Christmas, holidays and big one-off bills. If you just look at one month the budget won't work. A free automated budget planner will do it for you at www.money-savingexpert.com/budgeting. Then see where you're overspending and stop it.
2 Slash the interest costs: Then more of your repayments will go towards clearing the actual debt, rather than feeding the bank's profits. The easiest way is to do a credit card balance transfer.
3 Danger! Minimum repayments: Nastily these credit card minimums are designed to keep you perpetually in debt. A typical minimum repayment is 2% of the reducing balance each month, so if you had a £3,000 debt at 17.9% it would take 41 YEARS to repay and cost £6,300 in interest.
To fight back, with that £3,000 debt, simply FIX the monthly repayment at the first month's minium to £60 (2%) and you'll clear it all just seven years at a cost of only £2,000.
4 Repay the most expensive debts first: The more expensive the debt, the quicker it grows. So list them and push every penny at them and just cover the miniums on everything else. Even if these steps don't work, Martin says he has never seen a debt problem that is unsolvable. The most important thing is to get help from one of the non-profit debt counselling agencies like the Citizens Advice Bureaux, National Debtline or the Consumer Credit Counselling Service.
Martin's best selling book - The Money Diet is available from all good bookshops.

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