Most of us are ‘buy now and pay later’ people? If you are, you probably have at least one credit card and possibly a store card as well, if not more.

The question is: do you control your credit cards or do they control you?

If you feel that they control you then there are two simple ways to regain control - don’t hide your head in the sand, be proactive and do something about it!

The good news is that there are two easy ways of regaining control of your credit cards and keeping it. You can use these methods in whatever way suits you. If you want to pay off your balance in total and cut your cards up, you can do that.

If you want to reduce your card balance more quickly, you can do that. Or, if you just want to reduce the amount of interest you pay on your credit or store card debt, but continue to run a balance more cheaply, you can do that too.

The two methods you need are very simple and you may have thought about doing them before, you may even have tried them and given up. But they work best when you keep at them. The first method is to pay 0% interest on your cards. The second method is to run a monthly budget and use it to monitor and reduce your spending.

Method #1: never pay interest on your credit cards

Even if you don’t want to cut your spending, aren’t interested in saving and don’t care about the size of your credit card bill, you will still be better off not paying interest on your card borrowings.

If you have an existing balance, we recommend you transfer it to the NatWest Classic credit card, which offers 0% interest for 13 months and only charges a 2% balance transfer fee which is the cheapest on the market. Switching a balance of £3,000 from a card charging 16.9% to the NatWest card could save you £550 in interest over 13 months.

If you are about to book a holiday, or make a major one-off purchase or set of purchases, then get a credit card especially for the job. We recommend the Sainsbury’s Bank Mastercard which charges 0% interest for 10 months on new purchases and has a low rate of 5.9% for the life of any balance transfer.

For actual holiday spending, we recommend the Post Office credit card which does not charge a foreign exchange fee on foreign purchases, saving you 2.5% a time. The Post Office card also offers 0% interest on balance transfers for 10 months.

Method #2: do a budget and it is easy to spend less

Budgeting is simple. Once you have done it you will be amazed you never did it before.

If you find that the credit card comes out of your wallet or purse every time you are in a shop or bar then you are probably spending too much. You can’t cut your spending unless you know where the money goes each month.

Make a list of all your monthly outgoings, either as an excel document, or by hand. These should include everything from mortgage repayments through to takeaways and gym memberships.

Once you have filled in all of the relevant costs, add them all up and subtract the total from your monthly take-home pay.

Are you overspending each month? If you use your credit card a lot then the answer is probably “Yes”.

Even if you are not overspending, how much do you have left over each month? Is it enough to add to your savings? You do have savings don’t you?