Spending down debt: The best way to pay depends on your goals

This is part of our series on strategies you can adopt to free yourself from burdensome debt.

There is no doubt that the hardest part about getting out of debt is finding the extra cash to do it with. Most of our posts here on WalletPop deal with different shades of that perplexing question -- how to generate extra income, spend less money, find the cheapest credit cards -- all towards the goal of reducing your punishing levels of debt.

But there is another, not quite so hard question about getting out of debt that we've only scratched the surface of so far on WalletPop. That is, once you've unlocked that extra cash and are in a position to start actually getting out of debt, what is the best way to pay it off?

Simple answer: That depends on your goals. In this series we list common reasons people want to reduce their debt load and the best strategy for that goal.

The two main techniques for spending down debt, our blogger Lita Epstein has come up with are the 'Snowball Effect' and the 'Round Robin.' The snowball effect is best for people who are getting eaten alive by high interest charges on their credit card balances. The plan there is to simply pay off your high interest credit cards first.