Debt Free Living
Debt free living can be made to order. How do you debt proof your life? You need to start with the right plan and follow that plan to completion.
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The temptation of debt today is ever increasing. We hear and see 24 easy payments, no down payments and deferred payments everyday. Debt messages are everywhere. Soon we become desensitized to them and before you know it they are part of our everyday life. Why is this the case?
Once you sign that paper, take that first step, debt has you firmly in its grasp. Debt free living is all about resisting temptation. In order to start debt proofing your life you have to stop making more of it.
The first step
This part is simple; you don’t have to do anything. For most of us that is the hardest item on the list to accomplish though.
Just don’t make any more debt for yourself. Don’t defer any more purchases. Pay for that item with cash only. Don’t sign your name to any more payment plans- ever.
Month one
That wasn’t so bad was it? Doing nothing seems a little unnatural at first. Whipping out the credit card was so easy. Too easy, wasn’t it? That’s why the balance became unmanageable so quickly didn’t it?
The first month you haven’t added to your debt at all. In fact, just by doing nothing you have taken a giant steps towards debt free living.
Let me explain…
You have paid your regular monthly debt payments right? Mortgage, credit card etc right? By paying your bills and not making any more debt you have reduced your debt load. By reducing your debt load you are reducing your interest payments too. Interest is what holds us in bondage to debt, forcing us to become what Scott Nearing calls a ‘wage slave’.
Reduce Debt= Reduce Interest= Debt Free Living soon!
Month Six
You have trained yourself to use cash and you have not created any more debt load for 6 months. In fact, your total debt load and interest payment have reduced substantially over the past 6 months
What do you do now?
You speed up the process, that is what you do. Repeat after me, Extra Payments, Extra Payments, Extra Payment! This is what is known as snowballing your payments. Just as a snowball gathers momentum when rolling down a hill, so your debt will be reduced by making extra payments. Speeding up the process leads to debt free living much quicker.
By making one extra payment on all of your bills every 6 months you will dramatically lower the amount of time it takes to get out of debt. Start now. You’ll be glad you did. You have now turned the tide and reversed the flow of your money out of your hands.
Up until this point you had bought into the notion that debt would free your lifestyle… just like Jane and I did. All that stuff didn’t bring peace or happiness it only brought bondage.
How do you debt proof your life?
Being released from the constraints of debt is a real thrill. The real question is how do we keep that debt from coming back? In other words how do we debt proof our life.
What is debt free living though?
For some of you making more money is the answer. But usually a high dollar income quickly leads to a high dollar lifestyle. You think, I’ve got a good job, my spouse has a good job, and we can afford it. Right? Then just as quickly as you got out you are back in debt again. It happens slowly at first, a better car, new furniture and then soon you are maxed out again.
A better solution is to reduce expenses to the point where you are comfortable. This is the path that Jane and I have chosen with great success. Debt Free Living is really about learning the conserver lifestyle. You have learned to conserve your money, why not learn to conserve everything in your life.
We started with energy. No, I don’t mean we don’t use any energy to do anything, just laze around. We turn off the lights; the TV, everything and we just talk. We want to talk to each other now that we have discovered debt free living.
Take action and you will soon be on your way to Debt Proofing your own life. First you have to learn how to become debt free. Jane and I paid off over $43,000 in debt in only 3 years and 4 months. We took action and now we are done.