It is very discouraging to be working so hard and not having enough money to enjoy your life. I have great news to share with you today. A new approach to the real truth about how to be debt free and is it just a myth, especially when you are living paycheck to paycheck. I am going to introduce you to a new way of controlling your finances so that you can eliminate debt and become debt free before you retire.
Your income is the fastest tool you have to build wealth. Just think if you didn’t have any payments like a car payment, rent or mortgage payment, School loans, credit cards, etc, you could build wealth very easily. Just stick your extra income in savings and you would be rich in only a matter of a few years.
So if you could eliminate financial debt by following a step by step plan, would you do it? I’m about to show you a way to do just that, to become debt free and live your dream. Unchain yourself to a life of debt and misery. Become free and live like GOD intended for you to live.
How to Become Debt Free Without Winning the Lottery
It is not a myth. You can become debt free even when you are living paycheck to paycheck, without winning the lottery. Many Americans are doing just that. They live like no one else so that they can live and give like no one else later.
The very first thing to do is to create a budget. A budget allows you to see where your money is going. By knowing where your money is going you can devise a plan to plug the leaks so that you are controlling exactly where your money is going.
I highly suggest you get the free app, EveryDollar, offered by Dave Ramsey, to create a budget and take control of your money to make your money work for you instead of the other way around. The rich people do it all the time. Why not you too?
By creating a budget you find out exactly what your expenses are and put them into an order where you can control what gets paid for first, second, and so on. This will free up money you never knew you had. Trust me on this one. I was amazed by how much money was being wasted when I started using the app.
Dave Ramsey has created a new approach to becoming debt free. He is all about attacking debt with a vengeance. He says you can wander into debt but you can never wander out of debt. So True. We spend too much money on impressing people we don’t even know. You see or hear about conveniences that people buy and we assume that we need this in our lives as well.
You see people racking up debt like there is no tomorrow and eventually we see this as normal. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. If we all just used a little common sense, we wouldn’t be in the predicament that we created. Below I have some steps to follow to get your money to behave and work for you so that you too can be debt free.
The first step in creating your budget is to list all of your debts, from smallest to largest. For example, Let us assume you have living expenses like rent or mortgage, utilities, food, car payment, credit cards, gasoline, student loan debt. This is a typical debt for most people. Next prioritize these debts in this order: Shelter, food, utilities then the rest of your debt. The first three must be paid before anything else.
You can’t expect to make a car payment if you fail to pay rent or your mortgage and are faced with living on the streets. This is the first most important expense to pay. You must have shelter. The next most important expense on the list is food, well because you must eat to live, right? The third most important expenses are utilities so you can maintain your house or apartment with lights, heat, water, etc.
For me, I placed food third after utilities because If forced I can eat Ramon noodles or tuna sandwiches until I have the money to buy real food. Having lights, heat or air conditioning is more important to me than exactly what I eat.
If you don’t have any more money left after the three necessities of shelter, food, and utilities are paid then you have an income problem. This means you have to earn more money to live. I will address this key item in a moment.
Now that I have my first three most important items listed on my budget, I can start plugging in my other debts., smallest to largest.
In the image above I have a complete budget for June. My first three budget items are my necessities of Shelter, Utilities, and Food. The rest fall under my debt snowball. Snowball is a term used to describe the debts that will start getting paid off. If you notice I don’t have any student loans outstanding.
Since the Visa account is my lowest monthly recurring expense I will pay the minimum payment on all other debts and with all the extra money I can get my hands on will go to pay off the Visa account first Once the Visa account is paid in full, I will take that payment of $42.65 and add it to the $331.04 for the Toyota payment and then any other extra money I can find will go toward paying the Toyota off next.
This is called the debt snowball because as a snowball rolls downhill, it gets larger and larger as it travels. Applying this principle to paying off debt, Once a debt is paid in full, take that payment and add it the next payment in line. Hence, the payments get larger every time you go to the next item on your list.
Eliminate Financial Debt With More Income
The key to becoming debt free is to have more income than expenses. It’s a fact that filling in a hole in the ground using a bigger shovel will fill the hole up faster. Likewise, your debt is similar in that. The more income you can throw at the debt the faster the debt goes away.
You may ask how is this possible if I’m already throwing every dollar I make toward my debt? It may seem impossible but please bear with me for a moment. This is a two-step operation. You can’t expect to continue becoming debt free if you continue the same lifestyle you are living. You have to reduce the amount you spend on conveniences and use that money to throw at your debt.
So the first step of the operation is to cut your lifestyle to the minimum. The lower you can cut it, the faster you can get out of debt. The second step is to work extra if you must but to throw every single penny you can find at your debts. Pay minimums on all the debts except the lowest debt you have and attack it with full force until it is dead.
Dave Ramsey says to temporarily suspend putting money in your retirement plan at work (401K) and use that money to pay down debt. NOTE: (I did this last year but didn’t make the necessary adjustments to my W4 and ended up owing taxes to the government. Ouch!)
The second step of this simple formula is to either pick up a second job like delivering pizza, driving for Uber or Lyft, working more overtime with your existing employer, babysitting, dog walking, or anything that will pay you real money.
Once you reduce your lifestyle to the bare minimum and stop spending money on wants you will find you have more money to throw at your debt.
Bare minimum lifestyle is to stop going to restaurants unless you are working there, no more Starbucks coffee, eat rice and beans (cut your food bill way down), no vacations, no movies, no cable TV. It is up to you to make adjustments so that you can become debt free. Live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else.
How to Start a Home Based Business For More Income
This is where the truth will set you free. By having your own business working from home you get the benefits of more tax deductions plus operating your very own online business, where all the profit is yours to keep! For less than a dollar a day you can have an online business and earn commissions off of every customer that buys a product from a dealer you direct them to. Yes, I’m talking about affiliate marketing.
But the sweetness of this setup is that there is no inventory to invest in or store, nothing for you to ship, no commuting to your second job, and you get to pick your hours.
The reason this setup works for everyone… I had an occupation that was a rotating shift. That is one week I would work days and the next week I would work nights. What is bad about this shift is I couldn’t find a regular second job that would work with this rotating shift. With an online business, I had no problems. I could work it at midnight when I returned home at night, or I could work it in the afternoons. Either way, I was able to pick my own hours.
I am inviting you to see for yourself if this new idea of making extra income so that you can become debt free will work for you. Just look at the review I wrote about Wealthy Affiliate.
Conclusion
The myth has been busted. You can become debt free working from paycheck to paycheck. I am living proof that it can be accomplished. All my credit card accounts have been paid in full. My Toyota will be paid off this year. Once this is done, we can travel to Nashville and do our debt-free scream with Dave Ramsey himself.
Living the dream is possible – if you desire it bad enough. I can only tell you how fortunate I am because I did desire the dream bad enough. I joined an online community of Entrepreneurs to teach me how to build a website and market myself online to earn an income. With this income, I was able to get my finances under my control and soon I will be completely debt free. All because I took the time to join for free to learn how to have a better life.
Do yourself a favor and read my #1 recommendation review of Wealthy Affiliate. You can join for free and remain a free member for the rest of your life if that is what you wish.
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