Home » Paying off debt » Debt free

Debt Busting Tips: Seven Steps to Paying Off Debt

 

This post contains debt-busting tips on paying off debt and becoming debt-free. I have already shared the two levels of awareness of debt – the feelings one gets when one only suspects and the certainty of numbers, and the two mental shifts I found helpful when dealing with debt. Today, I’ll tell you about the seven steps to debt-busting.

Debt Busting Tips: Step One

Look at your income and expenditure to get into serious debt busting; if you have looked recently, look again – this time properly.

Make sure that you really know what you spend every day, every week, every month, down to several pennies. A friend of mine has a line in her budget for the difference between what she has recorded as spending and how much money has left her account – she calls it ‘GKW’ (God Knows What). If your GKW budget line is large, it is time to start re-recording these expenses.

During this first step, your objective is to ensure your budget is as tight as the red dress Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Woman. This doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be space for life – it only means that your GKW line should be down to several pence.

Pay Off Debt: Step Two

Teach yourself to look at your budget as the story of your life.

Most people get this one wrong – they look at their budget and see numbers, so they start adjusting numbers. Many organisations and businesses do the same; they see their budgeting as a number gymnastics, and then they wonder why reality is so far remote from their spreadsheet.

Don’t compare numbers; compare life events. Would you rather go to a concert or have a bottle of really good wine? You may decide to do either but this has to be a decision; not a bodged arithmetic exercise.

Become Debt-Free: Step Three

If your budget is as tight as possible and you are still getting into debt instead of getting out of debt, your cash flow is negative. And that is behind our debt-busting tip number three.

In other words, you do spend more than you earn. Your first task is to change that, and the fastest way to do it is to reduce spending.

Forget about the ‘latte factor’ – depriving yourself of the small stuff that can give you so much will only make you feel resentful.

Large savings can be made on the ‘big’ stuff. To decide what needs to be cut and how to check the different kinds of expenditure on your list.

Do you pay more than 60% of your income on ‘constant’ expenses like mortgage, loan repayments, and taxes? If you do, you may need to make some hard choices – you may have more house than you can afford!

Immediate gains in savings can be made by looking at your changeable expenditure – this includes all kinds of insurance and contracts that can be negotiated.

This step is not about getting out of debt; it is about stabilising your budget so that you are sure that every month there is enough money in your account to cover all your financial obligations and to live.

Debt Busting: Step Four

Our debt-busting tips move along to earning more.

Only after that, look at your income – and look carefully!

How can you sustainably increase this? Selling stuff on eBay and doing garage sales helps temporarily but is unpredictable and unsustainable. To kick the debt’s but you need to develop reliable, regular and sustainable sources of income.

And please note the plural – one is a volatile number. Just try to make a toothpick stand vertical. Now try the same with three toothpicks; easier, huh?

It is the same with income – it is better to make $1,000 per month from three different sources than the same from the same source.

Paying Off Your Debt: Step Five

This debt-busting tip may be hard to swallow.

Be careful with pinning your money-making hopes on the Kindle books – you are a decent writer, but there are many more like you out there.

Many more writers are much better than you and in more senses than one. The competition is severe, so you shouldn’t expect to make any money from Kindle books that will make a difference to you any time soon.

Except if you write really kinky/niche pornography and have excellent links and an agent (I am not joking, I have researched the matter). I also wrote a book on how to pay off debt, and while it is doing well, the income is nothing to get excited about.

Wave Your Debt Good-Bye: Step Six

Start generating ideas about how you are going to earn more. It is very tempting to come up and stay with one ‘big’ thing, something that you have come to regard as your ‘special gift’ or something people tell you is easy. Don’t do that!

It is likely that your ‘special gift’ is fairly thin; it may be wise to go with something you value less as a gift but as a niche. Yes, I would like to make money writing best-selling novels. But I know that though I am not that bad as a writer, so many are so much better, and the competition is cut-throat. I make a bit of my writing, but I certainly can’t live on it. So I keep looking. And no, I don’t think I can write porn lucrative as this is.

Dreaming may be easy; realising ideas is never so. This needs persistence, research, knowledge, learning and so many other conditions. Did you know that roughly two of any ten ideas you may have will succeed? Well, now you do!

Debt Busting Tips: Step Seven

Never forget that solid, sustainable income streams are built organically – they take time to develop but after that only grow stronger. This means that you should take a longer-term look and give it all you have, even if you have to make sacrifices now.

And finally…

These debt-busting tips are not a whim.

Anyone can get into debt, but to get out of debt you need to change your thinking and reconsider your actions. I know!

(You may also wish to check the things you must NOT do if you want to become debt-free.)

Go implement these debt-busting tips now (and you can thank me later).

 

12 thoughts on “Debt Busting Tips: Seven Steps to Paying Off Debt”

  1. Great series Maria. I am guilty of the GKW budgeting, which isn’t dramatic on a positive cash flow but should be reduced anyway. Now that I share expenses with my BF, anything I spend I have to claim back half to him, so it is a motivation to track expenses, track it or lose half of it!

    Reply
    • @Pauline: Yes, GKW tend to creep up; it is time for us to do the exercise for eliminating it again. As I said, the budget should be as tight as the red dress.

      Reply
  2. I think most people’s problem is that they spend more than they earn and just abuse their credit cards. If people could just learn to go easy with the loans and spend reasonably, they would be just fine.

    Reply
    • @Totio: Technically you are correct. Problem is that the details of how to spend less than one earns is a bit more complicated – some don’t earn enough, others have no notion of how to stop shopping and wanting things; and yet others simply don’t understand money at all. Getting in debt can be a very big and life changing crisis – it was for me.

      Reply
  3. I like the GKW line. I’ve yet to find a good way to budget for gasoline since the amount of driving done varies so much. Doing the paper route, I was burning a quarter tank each night. When carpooling to Boulder, I was paying for a tank of gas each week. And when I was riding my bike, a tank of gas was lasting my wife about a month.

    Reply
    • @Glen: Possibly although I think needs are very difficult to pinpoint – after the very basic ones we are in ‘wants’. Problem is we want more and more…

      Reply
  4. It is just so easy to lose track of when and where the money is going. Personally I find it nigh on impossible to keep everything in check. When I do I seem like a penny pincher! To myself that is. So it is a fine balance. Anyway, still great advice. Cheers

    Reply
    • @Michael: No…when you track your money and do budgeting you are not a penny pincher; you are great person in control of their life and future. And what is wrong with being a penny pincher?

      Reply
  5. I over-budget for gas by about 10% to cover the swings in gas prices. If and when there’s money left over in the gas budget at the end of the month, it goes straight into debt paydown!

    Reply

Leave a comment