Do you loathe answering your phone because you fear that it’s going to be your bank or another lender telling you that you’re late on your payment? Do you find yourself staying up late at night trying to come up with ways to juggle your earnings versus how much you owe? Well, you are not alone. The majority of American’s have some sort of debt. However, there are ways to get out of the hole and come out on top.
One of the first things you should do is have the right mind-set. It cannot be stressed enough just how important this initial step is. This is practically 50 percent of the solution. One of the quickest ways to adjust your mind-set is going to be by making sure you are paying attention to the things you tell yourself and the types of questions you ask yourself. Even when things seem hopeless they are not, and a lot of times you can use times of opposition and struggle to grow stronger if you can view this time period as a challenge.
We ask ourselves questions on a regular basis, many times throughout the course of a day. If someone asks themselves the question” How come I wasn’t smart enough to start saving way back when?” then your brain is going to come up with an answer, however, it won’t be the one they truly wanted and needed to hear. Rather, if you ask smarter questions you will get smarter answers which will lead your way out of debt and really any type of situation. For example: “How can I come up with ‘x’ amount of dollars within the next 3 months without doing something illegal?”
Smart, straightforward questions and planning can give you the push in the right direction that you and your bank account crave.
The next part of the equation is to figure out where exactly you want to be financially. Do you just want to rid yourself of your current debt or would you like to be able to keep and expand your current luxuries and have the lifestyle you’ve always wanted without having debts?
This is the part where you get out your notepad, or whatever you have to write on, and start thinking about your future and what you truly want. If you use the leverage you currently have from your position of struggle and frustration it will provide you with a great amount of momentum to fulfil your dreams when you go to take action. Now, go ahead and write down your financial goals. Next, you will go through your list of goals and pick a deadline to achieve them by. Now that you have your goals and deadlines you will want to be very clear what your reasons for these are. If your reasons aren’t strong enough you are not going to put enough effort and drive into making them happen and you will be right back here asking yourself why it didn’t work. If you have enough emotional motivations tied into your goals you are going to stick to them.
After doing all of this, you will want to devise a plan. How are you going to implement these goals? How are you going to make sure you are following through? If you wanted a higher paying job, are you going to make sure you call and ask for interviews? If you wanted to start your own business, do you have anything you can sell to make your initial investment? Maybe you want to start an online empire and sell products directly to people. If so, you will need to start taking the steps necessary to make this happen. This is the crucial part of your journey where you need to take action. If you don’t have a plan for yourself you are guaranteed someone else does. This is the only way to truly get out of debt without going right back into it. Unless, of course, you decide to give up all your possessions and luxuries and basically give up. However, if you can view this time as a challenge and push yourself towards your goals, you can accomplish great things and get out of debt.
What is going to make you happy and your family happy? Use this as leverage and start taking action today so that you don’t have to go through this process later in life when you may be facing quite a few more obstacles.
This post is contributed by by Steven Millstein. Steven is a personal finance guru with more then 20 years experience helping individuals and families improve their financial situation. Make sure to visit his personal blog, Credit Zeal, for free help and advice with credit repair and debt management.
