At the time of this writing, the average American has at least two credit cards, and the average American family carries at least $5,000 in credit card debt. To many of us, this has just been accepted as, "A way of life," or, "just the way it has to be." Some of us, though, go against what is "normal." Some of us are ready to say, "Enough is enough."
You single greatest wealth-building tool is your income. You are more likely to build substantial wealth by saving and investing your income than you ever will by playing the lottery, saving up rewards points, or playing single feshop stocks. How then, would you utilize your income to build wealth if nearly all of it is owed to someone else each month? Unfortunately, that is how many Americans live. Each month, their entire paycheck comes in, and immediately goes back out to debts.
If you want to utilize your income to its greatest potential, you will have to keep some of it around, and that means dumping debt. A good place to start for most people is usually credit card debts. Credit cards typically carry higher interests rates than, say, student loans or home mortgages, and they are also typically smaller in size than other debts.
To clean up your debts, I support using what is known as the "Debt Snowball" system. The debt snowball is a system for getting out of debt that was developed by financial advisor Dave Ramsey. It has helped thousands (if not millions) of Americans get out of debt and build wealth.
The way the debt snowball works is backwards in the minds of many financial advisors. That is, rather than taking a mathematical approach to dumping your debt, you take a behavioral approach. The theory behind this is that money management is 20% math and 80% behavior.