Deleting debt without plan is an empty resolution

It's that time of year when we get serious, for at least the better part of a week, about getting out of debt. Except for weight loss — according to a number of surveys compiled by people whose New Year's resolution is to find out about other people's New Year's resolutions — there is no more common wish among the American people than to lose our liability.

This is largely due to the fact that most of us are in some sort of financial debt — as evidenced by the 886.2 million credit cards that are in circulation.

That works out to roughly 3.5 cards per man, woman and child.

Stacked end to end, they could buy every Saturn automobile, big-screen TV, movie ticket and set of golf clubs in the entire country. With enough left over for dinner.

If there just weren't so many of them already overextended.

Collectively, these cards have a balance of $2,365 billion, give or take, with an outstanding balance of about $696 billion, according to figures on CardWeb.com, a Web site dedicated to all things credit card.

The amounts rise every second, and rather exponentially at that. In 1990, according to CardWeb's statistics, the average credit-card indebtedness per U.S. household was $2,966. In 1994 it was $4,301. In 2004 it was $9,312.

By about the middle of the next decade, we'll all be washing Mr. Mastercard's and Mr. Visa's cars and shining their shoes.

The current average percentage rate for the cards, by the way, is 13.77 percent — up from 12.71 percent a year ago. The high cost of living is nothing compared to the high cost of going in debt.

But enough with the morbid details. As a public service, I called Sherri Overby, a professional financial coach at Financial Vital Signs, a Salt Lake debt-counseling/financial-health company, for a little advice about actually keeping a New Year's resolution to get out of debt.

Sherri was happy to dispense her advice, free of charge; sort of like a dentist encouraging somebody to use fluoride whether they get it from them or not.

"People will say, and this makes me laugh, 'This year I want to get out of debt,' " says Sherri, "but they have no clear goal of how to do it. I like to ask how are they going to accomplish that? Do they have a plan?"

Sherri has one. It involves three basic steps.