If you’re having financial problems, you might find that your credit card debt is spread out over three or four or even more cards. Maybe you have a Visa, a MasterCard, a Discover card and a Capital One card, plus a few department store cards, each carrying several thousands of dollars of debt.

The result is an ugly parade of bills, with each company needing a minimum monthly payment that mostly pays the interest and takes just a small amount off of your debt.

If it seems that the debt mountain never seems to go down, that’s not an illusion. The situation is not designed to help you get that debt down. It’s a cruel mixed message the credit industry sends us because if you have high credit card debt, your credit rating goes down. But even if you have too much debt, the credit card companies just keep raising your credit ceiling and sending more and more credit card offers to lure you into more debt.

The instinct is to keep taking out more accounts and transferring money to those deceptive zero percent offers. The problem is that the zero interest rate expires in a matter of months and leaves you with yet another bill to pay, which only makes managing that debt even more impossible.

But there is another approach to handling this debt that gives you more control to start making headway against those debts. But to use this approach, you will have to think with your head, not your emotions. This inside out approach to paying down your credit cards is simple and gives you a roadmap to freedom from debt.

First of all, stop taking out more accounts. That only gives another credit card company access to your money. They can charge you membership fees and try to lure you with credit insurance. If you have three or more credit resources already, that’s plenty.

Second, use short term offers wisely. If one of your existing accounts offers you a zero percent deal for a few months, take it and transfer a small amount from another card to that account. Then you can focus on paying off that transferred amount and see 100% of your payment go against principle, which is the fastest way out of debt.

That brings us to the cornerstone of the inside out method. Instead of paying on the card with the highest interest rate, give them the minimum payment and put your excess funds against the cards with the lowest debt. That debt will go down more quickly and then you can add that payment amount to attack the next biggest account, and so on.

In this way you are getting the most bang for your buck with the small amount of extra funds you may have. And it gives you a great feeling to know you are slowly killing off the monster of credit card debt one card at time.

By using a smart approach to the credit card debt you have, you take control of the problem and put it on a program to go away. And that will be the greatest feeling of all.