Ever noticed how debt never goes away?
It arrives in your mailbox, your inbox and on your phone. No matter where you are, it will find you. I’m no financial expert, I’m just a simple person who fell for all the fancy marketing and found our family in major debt.
Here’s how we began to whittle down and finally live freely with no debt.
First, switch your mind set — make living free of debt more important than wild consumerism.
Second, take responsibility — you created the debt by spending freely without first creating a money plan.
Third, plan — make a plan that will lead to freedom from debt that is simple, manageable and easy to do.
Here’s the plan we used to rid ourselves of retched debt: List all your credit card debt and attach the minimum payment amount to each debt. Next, pick one debt to pay off. We picked the smallest one because we wanted to get rid of one fast and we thought seeing the progress of one less debt payment would keep us motivated.
How the plan works: Pay minimums payments into every debt each month, with an additional $50 toward the debt your focused on paying off.
As the debit shrinks, your minimum payment will decrease. Don’t adjust your payment. Stick to paying the original minimum payment plus $50, keeping your established monthly payment the same until this debt is gone. By doing this, you will pay off your debt faster. The interest will cost you less.
Dance for joy. The first debt’s paid off.
To pay off the remaining debt, add the established monthly payment of the first debt (minimum payment plus $50) to the second debt’s minimum payment. This will establish a new monthly payment to go toward a second debt. When the second debt is gone, keep rolling the payments into the next debt until they are all gone
This is called the snowball method, but I call it the “Why didn’t someone show me this sooner?” method.
Sounds so simple! But wait! What if you can’t even make the minimum payments, let alone add $50, and you’re surviving by moving your debt from card to card? This stress of debt hysteria is eating into every part of your world — you can’t sleep, you’re depressed and feeling out of control, you’ve researched all the debt articles desperate to end the debt chock hold.
Here is the mind set switch that changed our lives.
Credit cards are not cash — they are a vehicle to create debt. Because nothing is worth living day to day struggling with the stress of debt, we vowed to fix the problem we created.
We were in debt because we spent more dollars than we brought home. It was so easy to do — clever marketing convinces us that we deserve to have it all. No, we don’t, not unless we have the cash to pay for it.
What you really deserve is to live a life free of the stress debt can cause.
So take control of your money — it’s your money and it’s your debt. You got yourself into it and only you can get out. Stop using credit cards until you erase your debt.
Here is the way we used to find that extra $50.
I’m going to show you how to begin to shave dollars off your monthly expenditures, which you can use to begin your debt snowball payment plan.
Laundry soap
Start with laundry soap. This is a big expense that takes cash you could be reducing your debt with.
For 76 pods of commercial laundry detergent, it is $26.99, or 35 cents per load. The average family of four does 10 loads of laundry per week, so per week it is $3.50, per year it is $182. Homemade laundry soap 5.4 cents per load, per week 54 cents, per year $28.08
If you purchase soap, it costs $182. If you make your own, it costs $28.08.
Just by stirring together your own laundry soap, you freed up $153.92 to go toward debt
That’s three extra $50 payments to cover January, February and March. And, that’s just savings on your laundry soap.
It’s so simple to make, you will be shocked!
Recipe
- Take a large bowl or plastic bucket Empty one box each of washing soda and one box of borax into the bucket
- Add two bars of grated laundry bar soap
- Stir it all up.
- That’s it you’re done — you just made six litres of powdered laundry soap.
Use one tablespoon of the mixture per load of laundry.
Cost savings
Here’s the cost breakdown for 390 loads:
- Washing soda — $6.99
- Borax — $7.99
- Laundry soap bar — $5.98 (two for $2.99 each)
- Total — $20.96
One litre will give you 65 loads, and 65 Loads multiplied by six litres yields 390 loads. This works out to five cents per load.
Homework
Serious about becoming debt free?
Here’s your homework: Make a list of everyday expenses, the things you purchase on a regular basis.
In following articles, I’ll try to show you how to shave money and create those extra payments.
Super saver trick
Read the Facebook group Eat Well Spend Almost Nothing.
You will learn the easiest and least expensive way to live debt free, create a budget and meal plan.
Thanks for reading.
