<prompt> Human: Long time lurker, first time poster. Be gentle!6 credit cards, 2 cars. We spend around 1600mo on debt of our 5kmo income US military, not including billsmortgage. Making minimum payments were projected to be debt free in around 15 years kill me, but its really challenging to pay more than the minimums in my current paygrade. Weve looked into debt consolidation that will have us debt-free in around 5-6 years, but Ive heard a lot of negative things about consolidation, namely the high interest rates. Im looking into consolidation through Navy Federal tomorrow but for now Im really interested in the communitys thoughts. My thought is that for a couple of our credit cards we pay 25 interest anyway, so I dont see the downside. Im also familiar with the snowballavalanche methods and would like to know if thats useful in my situation. Alternatively is there a quick way a guy can make 30 large? : Id love your inputs. Thanks!Assistant: Have you tried calling the companies to ask for a reduction in your interest rate?Are any of these debts from before you entered the military?What does your budget look like that it has you spending 3400month on expenses while youre active duty? Human: when you factor in my mortgage, bills, HOA, and foodgas it adds up.  <response>: Do you have a budget that you track so you can make sure youre not missing something obvious that you could cut back on? 3400mo is a pretty significant outlay of cash. Im asking because the people in this subreddit are pretty awesome at picking apart budgets and pointing out things that seem like a good expenditure on the surface but are actually good places to make cuts. 