This is the Ramsey Call of the Day, part of the Ramsey Network.

Today's question of the day comes from Harry in Georgia. He says, I have a budget in place,

and I'm using the debt snowball. Would you recommend consolidating all of the debt into one

giant personal loan? I also have a

total of $50,000 between five credit cards, a personal loan, and an appliance loan. I also have a ton of

equity in my home, so I was wondering about doing a home equity loan, which could give me tax

savings on the interest. Should I just keep it status quo for now and

continue the snowball or do debt consolidation loan? Overall, I'm just looking to expedite debt

elimination. All right. So the debt snowball, I would not call status quo. I think that it is the

most effective way to pay off

debt. And it's been proven. There's been some studies. I know Harvard published a paper about

why the debt snowball actually works and that it works. It's the most successful way to pay off debt.

So I would not recommend Harry doing a consolidation or a helock.

And it sounds like you're just like trying to think of ways to get this debt out of your life.

And again, there's no easy button.

You're going to have to list your debts from smallest to largest and work to pay this off.

If you do a debt consolidation loan, there's a couple of things there.

You're not paying it off. You're just clumping it all together, moving it all together. And actually,

there's studies that show that when you do that, your brain thinks that you have less debt and you go

back into debt again because you've moved it all into one payment. You haven't actually paid it off.

Not to mention when it comes to debt consolidation, you know, they're doing

for you what you can do yourself. They're making deals with these companies. You can do that yourself.

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