Getting Out of Debt

6. January 2009 by Bernice Davis.

Hello:

I had  comments on the message yesterday so I thought I would address them today.   People have asked me about our three year plan to get out of debt and how we did it. 

My husband and I bought Dave Ramsey’s book about Getting out of debt and we applied some of his principles.   The book gave us a great strategy to begin. 

Here were our steps.  Some of these were taken from the book and others we added ourselves. 

1.     STOP SPENDING- This is the first step.  Stop adding to your debt.  I am aware that things will come up and unexpected situations will happen to cause you to incur debt but control what you came.  STOP ALL UNNECESSARY SPENDING.   Sacrifice now to enjoy a better life later.  IT is so worth it.   It takes time.  For my family it took really about five years though we aggressively have been working towards it about three years. 

 2.     Write it down.  You will be amazed at how you can solve and handle your debt when you actually know what you are facing.   Most of us have no idea how much debt we are in because we simply just pay the bills as they come and have not put a plan in place as to how long it will take us to get out of debt or we continue to pile debt on.

3.     Credit Card Debt or All Unsecured Debt-   We took the lowest bills first and we started doubling up the payments towards them.  We did not look at the cards with the highest interest rates first; we simply started working on the lowest balances.  We paid just the minimum amounts due on the higher credit card balances.    The strategy is that the lower amounts were being paid off quicker and you felt a sense of accomplishment seeing those bills disappear.  Once that bill was gone, we took that money that normally goes to that bill and used it to get rid of the next lowest bill.  Once that bill was paid, we took the money that we used to pay on those two bills and began to attack the next lowest bills and the cycle continued until all bills were paid off. 

4.      When a bill is paid off, do not consider that money to be free or extra money.  Use it to double the payments on other bills. 

5.     After a couple of years, our cars were paid off and we began to use the car note money towards our credit card bills.Okay, tomorrow I’ll give you some more of my tips.  This is going to be a special year.  Let’s plan to embrace a wonderful year and be ready to receive all the things that the Lord has reserved for us. 

Stay encouraged and I’ll See you tomorrow. 

God Bless. 

Don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily.   

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