If you have accumulated a significant amount of debt, you may lay awake at night trying to figure out how to pay off those debts and regain some degree of financial control. To eliminate your debts, the simple solution is to pay more than you spend, allowing you to shrink month-by-month the interest and principle that you owe.

Of course, that may be easier said than done. If you have a good job and can cover your daily expenses and make meaningful payments, this option may be possible if you create a budget and stick to it. For many, creation of a budget can be a challenge, and the important element is to correctly measure your actual spending.

If you have unnecessary expenses, like buying lunch every day at work or spending $5 a day on a Venti Latte, you may be able to trim enough spending to gather a tidy sum at the end of the month that will make a real difference in paying down your debt.

While this sounds like a good, responsible strategy to deal with large debt issues, it may not work for everyone. You may already have cut back this type of discretionary spending. You may take a lunch to work every day and you may make your coffee at home and carry a thermos. You may rarely go out to eat or the movies and have cut your cable bill and rely on Netflix as your sole entertainment source.

In our next post, we will look at some other “solutions” that are often proposed to individuals in this situation, such as credit counseling, debt settlement or bankruptcy.