Live Like No One Else: Debt Free Journey

In 2014 I declared Armageddon on debt. I felt like screaming from the top of my lungs how much I HATED it. While reflecting on every dream that I had, dreams of travelling, building organizations, and just being an overall giver and explorer, I became so upset thinking of all the debt I was responsible for. I became upset mostly because I was tired of being asked the theoretical question, "If money was not an issue, what would you be doing right now?" And have it remain just that a theory. I don't believe that money should be a limited, I believe that it should eventually work for me. For the things I want to do in Christ and for Him I believe that through sacrifice, discipline, planning, self-control and money management on my part he can and will bless me. Becoming a good stewardess became a goal for me. I'm not going to make this a huge faith/theology thing but it never made sense to me that Christians proclaiming to know God in all his glory didn't see the issue in struggling, living beyond their means/paycheck by paycheck when they had daily access to sensible advice from the Bible. So I said no more!!

As of  10/15/14 I am proud and bless to say that I am credit card debt free and have saved $1,000+ in my saving. I am on journey to be debt free by the age of 25 or the year of 2016. I am currently 23. This blog is possibly the first of many sharing details about my debt free journey. I hope that this encourages, challenges someone and if there is any questions that I could possibly answer please post below. 

Getting Started

1. I guess the first part in getting started is deciding to START. It sounds so cliche but it didn't start becoming real to me until I made up my mind to get serious about it. For me that met I had to write it down. Make it a goal or series of goal and make it visible to me from the moment I wake up to the moment I close my eyes.

2. I had to figure out where I stand. How much money did I make a month? What was I spending money on? What did I spend my most on? How much debt did I have? Who did I owe? When did I have to start paying? What was credit? What was my score? My Trends? My Habits?

So for me this step help me figure out how serious I was about the process because I had to put actions to my words. In this step you have to gather all of your financial information (Bank accounts, loan accounts, car payment, investments, house payments, credit card account) everything. I literally stalk everything, I called my banks for my passwords, the dreaded loan people for loan information. When I gathered majority of this information the site and resource that help me figure things out was Mint.com

Mint is a free personal finance tool. It literally gathers all of your financial information into one safe place. Within it you can set up goals, create a budget, create a reminders, and so much more. My favorite part of this site is what occurs after you take the time and link all your accounts. In the transaction tab you can place every transaction into a category, everything eventually falls into a category and from that point on it auto-categorize every thing you spend. The absolutely cool think about this (...yes I think it's cool and it make my geeky finance heart beat fast) is that when everything is in a category you can see your trends. It will show you in a bar graph/pie chart where you spend your money over time, in different categories. So cool!!! This and Credit Karma are my favorite and most used tools. Both are very self-explanatory and efficient. Both come as an app and both were recommended to me by a financial advisor.

3. The third step after gathering all of my financial account into one place (mint/credit Karma) I went to one of my banks and created an inconvenient savings account that was linked one way to my most active checking account. I sat down and signed an automated transaction where weekly $50 dollars is transferred from that checking into that saving (The amount depends on your financial situation but in order to create the habit of saving the amount should NOT be high enough that you are constantly aware of it, gradually you can increase it as you develop better money behavior/income).

Hint: For this to work this saving account should not be easily accessible. It should seriously be a bother for you to take money out (I.e you driving a distance, parking the car, standing in a line, showing ID in order to get access to that money). Do whatever to create in your mind that this money is unavailable to you unless it's a dire emergency.

4. Get Educated from Financially Successful People. One of the best $14 I have ever spent was on Dave Ramsey book "My Total Money Make Over". It's crazy to me how as a generation and people we ask help from people in the same sinking position as us. As my pastor says "you don't taking swimming lessons from a drowning man". I want to be debt free so I had to seek out and learn from people who ARE debt free or close to or at least on the journey. Read the book. It will change your life. 

5. If you have done the steps above and at least YouTube Dave Ramsey by now you've probably heard of the Debt Snowball. Doing all of these things and combining it to Dave Ramsey Baby Step plan I have been able to pay off 3 credit cards and save $1,000+. I am currently on Baby Step 2: Debt Snowball. I have listed the steps below. But the basic reasoning of the Debt Snowball is to start paying off your debt from the least to the highest building momentum. Every payment that is completed you add the amount of what you use to pay toward the next debt until that is paid off and continue until you snowball your way into debt freedom.

I hope this encouraged you to wake up and see this life changing opportunity to change your lineage by becoming debt free. I don't know about you but I am tired of being a slave to money, payments. I am tired of having more bills or month left to money. I am a server/student, it's not that I have a ridiculous amount of money to throw on this debt. But I truly believe that I can get out of debt in 2 years with some hope, tears, sweat and sacrifice. Join me! 

Beloved Rise,