Dvorkin On Debt: The Best Way to Double $2,500 in 2015

Here’s what I’ve learned in more than two decades as a CPA and financial counselor…

Big investors worry about the stock market. Average Americans worry about their bank accounts.

More than 20 years ago, I decided to help hard-working Americans get out of debt, instead of wealthy people invest their capital. I’m not bashing the wealthy — many have earned that money, not been handed it. I’m simply saying many Americans work just as hard or harder, but bad breaks have driven them deeply into debt.

While I’ve offered counseling and even proven debt solutions, I’ve always wanted something more compelling — a way to make it potentially lucrative to follow sound financial principles. As I’ve said many times: Spending money is fun, saving it is not.

How to win even if you don’t

The concept is simple: If you use PowerWallet, Debt.com’s powerful powerful (and free) web budgeting tool, you’ll not only save money, but you’ll be entered into our sweepstakes — and not just once. Just for signing up, you get 10 entries. Everyday you check into PowerWallet, you get another 10. Best of all, when you create a budget, you earn 100 entries.

So even if you don’t win the sweepstakes, you become familiar with the easy-to-use PowerWallet features that let you save money by seeing exactly where it’s going — and creating simple-to-follow budgets to ensure your cash is working for you and not against you.

What to do if you win

Should you win the Debt.com $2,500 Sweepstakes — and since we’re doing it every other month, you just might — you could of course spend that windfall in restaurants, bars, and malls.

Instead, I’d suggest doubling that money. You can do so without investing, and certainly without gambling. How?

First of all, do you have credit card debt? If you’re like most Americans, you do. Credit card debt tops $890 billion in this country. That’s more than $5,000 per credit card user. So if you apply that $2,500 toward your credit card balance, you not only cut that debt in half, you instantly save more than 15 percent, which is the average credit card interest rate.

That’s 15 percent for every month you wouldn’t have paid down your balance.

Then there’s this: With you credit card bill cut in half, you can apply the savings to pay down the rest even faster. Suddenly, you’ve saved even more. Finally, once you paid off your balance, PowerWallet will keep you from getting into debt again. So you can use the money that went to interest and fees to save money — and make some interest instead of paying it.

Before you know it, your $2,500 has not only doubled your savings, it’s halved your daily stress.

Want to make that $2,500 go even farther? If you have any debt at all, whether from credit cards or student loans, you can call one of our certified credit counselors at 1-800-810-0989 for a debt analysis. Just like Powerwallet and the Debt.com $2,500 Sweepstakes, the call is free — and the results might be lucrative.

Howard Dvorkin is a CPA and chairman of Debt.com, an educational resource for those who want to conquer all forms of debt in their lives.