Debt Freedom: One Bill at a Time and Start Small
George Boelcke CCP
March 20, 2007
When you’re up to your neck in bills and payments, you’re surviving not thriving, and that’s not a fun way to go through life. It means your bills are managing you, and not the other way around.
Yes, you can afford to be debt free. It’ll change your life, give you options and not obligations, and create financial freedom. However, when you don’t know where to start, it’s natural to be overwhelmed, get that “what’s the use” feeling, and never really starting or getting any traction or confidence.
What would it be like to be debt free? Is it a far away hope or already your current reality? But what are you prepared to do to change things around? While most financial advisors tell you to start with your highest interest debt, perhaps that’s not the way to build confidence, or even to get started in building some momentum and self-confidence that you can do it.
How about doing something you know you can accomplish? How about taking the smallest bill you currently have? It’ll be the easiest to focus on it, and the fasted one to get rid of. It’ll give you back a powerful feeling that you’re on track and making progress. In the same way it takes forever to stop a train, but a whole lot less time to turn it around, once you’ve got some momentum, your debts will shrink way faster than you ever thought possible.
Put your smallest bill on the fridge, or any place where it’s always in your face and on your mind. I want you to get really mad and focused, and take every extra few dollars you have and pay them on this one bill. Don’t tuck the money away until the end of the month. By that time, that money might not be around. When you some money – mail it in, pay it through web banking, or any other way, but do it right away! Even in the first month, your statement will start looking really weird. It’ll have a whole bunch of credits on it, instead of charges! And because it’s the smallest one, just a few months from now, it’ll be gone.
In the meantime, you’ve been making the minimum payments on your other bills every month. Now take the next smallest one. The first bill is paid off, so those payments are now freed up right? So take that freed-up money and re-direct it on this next bill, along with the regular minimum payments you’ve been making anyway, and the same extra money whenever you can. With that much focus, this one will be paid off very quickly as well.
After that, you’ve got some huge momentum, because you’re taking the money from the first two bills and now targeting the third one with some pretty large principal payments! Now you’ve got three sets of payments just going onto this one bill, and you’re well on the way! Each 20 bucks does matter a lot when you pay it down on the balance.
In fact, the It’s Your Money book walks you through an easy example of more than $25,000 in debt that you can pay in full with half the interest and around three years just by dedicating $100 extra towards this debt!
Yes it’s hard to get started, but you can do it – and it’ll be well worth it to get back your financial freedom. And if you don’t cheat or take some steps backwards, it’ll happen a lot faster than you ever thought possible. After all, you shouldn’t stay awake at nights worrying about your finances. You just need to stay financially disciplined during the day to make it happen!
Yes, you can afford to be debt free. It’ll change your life, give you options and not obligations, and create financial freedom. However, when you don’t know where to start, it’s natural to be overwhelmed, get that “what’s the use” feeling, and never really starting or getting any traction or confidence.
What would it be like to be debt free? Is it a far away hope or already your current reality? But what are you prepared to do to change things around? While most financial advisors tell you to start with your highest interest debt, perhaps that’s not the way to build confidence, or even to get started in building some momentum and self-confidence that you can do it.
How about doing something you know you can accomplish? How about taking the smallest bill you currently have? It’ll be the easiest to focus on it, and the fasted one to get rid of. It’ll give you back a powerful feeling that you’re on track and making progress. In the same way it takes forever to stop a train, but a whole lot less time to turn it around, once you’ve got some momentum, your debts will shrink way faster than you ever thought possible.
Put your smallest bill on the fridge, or any place where it’s always in your face and on your mind. I want you to get really mad and focused, and take every extra few dollars you have and pay them on this one bill. Don’t tuck the money away until the end of the month. By that time, that money might not be around. When you some money – mail it in, pay it through web banking, or any other way, but do it right away! Even in the first month, your statement will start looking really weird. It’ll have a whole bunch of credits on it, instead of charges! And because it’s the smallest one, just a few months from now, it’ll be gone.
In the meantime, you’ve been making the minimum payments on your other bills every month. Now take the next smallest one. The first bill is paid off, so those payments are now freed up right? So take that freed-up money and re-direct it on this next bill, along with the regular minimum payments you’ve been making anyway, and the same extra money whenever you can. With that much focus, this one will be paid off very quickly as well.
After that, you’ve got some huge momentum, because you’re taking the money from the first two bills and now targeting the third one with some pretty large principal payments! Now you’ve got three sets of payments just going onto this one bill, and you’re well on the way! Each 20 bucks does matter a lot when you pay it down on the balance.
In fact, the It’s Your Money book walks you through an easy example of more than $25,000 in debt that you can pay in full with half the interest and around three years just by dedicating $100 extra towards this debt!
Yes it’s hard to get started, but you can do it – and it’ll be well worth it to get back your financial freedom. And if you don’t cheat or take some steps backwards, it’ll happen a lot faster than you ever thought possible. After all, you shouldn’t stay awake at nights worrying about your finances. You just need to stay financially disciplined during the day to make it happen!
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