Follow Me Out Of Debt | Get Out Of Debt And Get Into Prosperity!

Self-sabotage is a sad reason to fail. You simply cannot be your own worst enemy when it comes to your get-out-of-debt plans. If you continue to use credit cards or take out new loans, you are going directly against what you had set out to do to begin with: to get out of debt and get into prosperity.   Nobody's perfect, and I get that. However, in the end, if you sabotage your own efforts, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you can't stay away from your credit cards and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, you need to seek professional guidance. You have to do what it takes to get yourself out of debt by not only paying down your balances but also refraining from using credit again until you either have your debt paid off in full or at a point where it's being managed appropriately.   If you know someone who may benefit from this show, please feel free to share it by sending them to http://followmeoutofdebt.com. If you're on Twitter, follow me at @fmoodpodcast for all of the latest t

Is it a hard and fast rule to wait until you're out of debt before you invest? Intuitively, it does make sense to only focus our resources towards paying off our debt as quickly as possible. What happens if getting out of debt takes much longer than what we had originally anticipated? We may be passing on some investment opportunities because we are putting all of this off until we're out of debt completely.   The main issue that I have with this is my knowledge that the essential component of compound interest is time. When we pass up time, we can't get it back. I don't necessarily think that we have to be going all in with investing while we're in the process of getting out of debt, but I do believe that we may want to consider investing a little during our get-out-of-debt journey. We can invest more once we're closer to getting out of debt or once we're out of debt completely.   Another benefit is that we can take advantage of any company matches that we may be eligible for with regards to retirement plans

Is debt good or bad? It's a question that many of us ask ourselves while we are in the process of getting out of debt. Good debt is usually considered to be mortgages or other debt products that have to do with investments or assets. Bad debt it typically associated with consumerism, such as credit cards, car loans, and personal loans.   I think it goes beyond that, though. I think we need to base the question on who you are as an individual. Are you someone who goes shopping as soon as you get a credit card in your hand? If so, and you lack self-control, it may be best for you to pay off debt entirely, close your accounts, cut up your cards, and swear off debt forever. However, if you're someone who rarely uses credit cards, you could potentially pay off or pay down your debt and continue using credit cards and other debt products responsibly and without problems.    The reason to consider asking yourself this and delving deeper into your spending habits as an individual is because your credit score will lik

Here's the question of the day. Is there anything in your life, knowing what you know now, that you would not do again today if you had the opportunity to do it all over again?   It's a question that allows us to reflect and realize the errors that we've made. It helps us to reinforce the reasons why we don't want to make the same mistakes again, even if we are currently in the middle of working through the situation that came up due to a bad decision.   We all make mistakes. Acknowledge your mistakes, forgive yourself, and learn the lesson from your mistake. The bad thing isn't the mistake itself, it's if you repeat the same mistake rather than learning the lesson from the mistake. Rise up, rise above, and realize that you can move forward and make good of previous poor decisions.   If you know someone who may benefit from this show, please feel free to share it by sending them to http://followmeoutofdebt.com. If you're on Twitter, follow me at @fmoodpodcast for all of the latest tips, updates, and strategie

What are your biggest concerns right now? What keeps you up at night? What is on your mind more than anything else during any given day?   You could have several concerns, but it's good to narrow it down to a few or even less than a few to keep things more focused on what's truly important. Once you've identified what's concerning you, you'll realize what the most critical issues are at the moment. The next step is to come up with a plan or have an idea for a plan so that you can feel that you have some sort of control over the situation. Granted, some problems are more difficult to resolve than others, but it's still good to at least come up with some ideas of what you can do about it.   If you're married, talk your concerns over with your spouse. You may be surprised to find that your spouse shares some of the same concerns as you do. You can work on things together as a team, a united front. This will help you to feel better almost immediately. Perhaps you and your spouse can address your concerns with a p

Do you have a fear of failure? Do you stay within your comfort zone, even when you are setting goals for yourself? If you never stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone, you'll never find out just how much you are capable of accomplishing.   You want to push yourself to go beyond the ceiling that you've created for yourself. When we were kids, we all had dreams and had at least an idea of what we wanted to be when we grew up. How many of us are actually following those dreams? Unfortunately, not too many of us. The reason is that somewhere along the way, we started to listen to people when they told us that our dreams were foolish. We started to fear what others might think or say, and from that was born the process of fearing failure.   It's time to break the cycle. It's time to set at least one goal for yourself that is outside of your comfort zone. It shouldn't be unrealistic, but it should be difficult and beyond your current comfort zone. Once you have accomplished that goal, you'll gain confidence,

What will your life look like ten years from now? An exceptional motivator is to envision your life in the future. Are you out of debt? Have you saved up enough money to be comfortable? Is your retirement savings on track?   While there are a lot of questions that you can ask yourself, the point of this exercise is to truly visualize where you are at financially speaking a decade from today, based on your current habits. You may be excited about the future, or you may be dreading the future. Regardless of your feelings at the moment, you have time to apply some logical strategies and reasoning with regards to your habits right now that will keep things on track if you're excited or change your future if you're a little scared of what's coming up in ten years.   Are your current financial habits in-line with where you want to be at ten years from now? If so, that's great. Use this visualization as a motivation tool. If not, then take this visualization as a warning that you need to make changes today so that y

I've got to earn some money in the next month or so, and I've identified just how I'll do it. That's half of the battle right there. It's pretty amazing what happens when you take a moment to not only identify a goal but to also identify the means whereby you'll be accomplishing said goal.   This whole process started (and I stumbled upon it) as I was updating my monthly budget. I decided to go into next month's budget ahead of schedule since it is summertime, and there are always upcoming expenses during this time of the year. I identified that I needed to earn additional income here in the next month or so, and instead of simply wishing that it may come true someday, I decided to write down specifically how I was going to do this.   The result of this a-ha moment was a list of ten ideas that were very realistic and could truly help me to earn additional money during the next month or so. I added the list to my whiteboard so that I'll see it every day, and the only thing left for me to do was to get to work

Do you care too much about what others are thinking? This can add a whole new level of complexity while you are trying to accomplish a goal, such as getting out of debt or any other goals that have to do with improving your personal financial situation.   This really comes down to human nature. We all want to be liked and accepted. When we come across resistance from others when we express our ideas or goals, we naturally want to give up and just go with the norm to stay in line with everyone else. The problem with this is that everyone else is likely having financial difficulties that they simply don't talk about. You are unaware of their situations, and it won't help them if you give up on your own goals.   Instead, it's better to stick to what you had decided to do in the first place. Be proud of what you are attempting to accomplish. Realize that someday those same friends or family members that are seemingly against your strategies and plans will see the results of your work. That will be what will stand

I've heard about the Pomodoro Technique before, but I have never actually looked into trying this until recently. I did several searches on Google, and I found a wealth of information on this topic. If there's one thing that I've learned over the last several years, it's that no matter how rich you are or how much wealth you have acquired, you can't purchase time. Time is not a commodity. It's not for sale. We all get the same amount of time in any given day, no matter how much you've got sitting in your bank account. That reason alone is why I am truly excited to try the Pomodoro Technique.   This technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. He used a pomodoro timer to break down work into 25-minute intervals. After you've completed the 25-minute work session, you are rewarded with a short break. After several 25-minute sessions, you have earned a longer break. You reset your pomodoro count and start all over again, possibly with a brand-new task.   I love to try anything that sounds like

Superheroes do not exist. Sorry, Superman fans, that's just reality. However, nobody is stopping you from being a superhero of personal finance. You can be a hero who stands proud and tall above all of the rest. All you need to do is take your goals seriously, and make sure that you are handling things in the same way a superhero would do it.   First, you need to own up to the problems that you see. Whether that problem is too much debt, not enough savings, not enough income, or all of the above, you have to be the one who owns this problem so you can take care of it. Once you own up to the problem and identify the situation, the next step is to take action. You don't see movies with superheroes where the superhero sees trouble and simply sits to see if the problem will go away on its own. Instead, the superhero is attacking the problem head-on and comes away to save the day.   Unfortunately, too many shows about superheroes do lead us to believe that a problem can be resolved quickly, shortly after the super

There's a lot to be said about morning routines. Setting your alarm a half-hour earlier or even an hour earlier will help you to set the entire tone for the day by getting yourself out of bed and completing your morning routine.   The morning routine in of itself can be pretty much anything that you want to do to get your engines running right off of the bat. For me personally, I enjoy meditating right after I get up for the day. Meditation helps to ground me, and even though it seems like this wouldn't help to feel more awake, for me it does. It's only five to ten minutes of meditation, but once I'm finished, I'm already off to a good start of the day with a clear mind and focus.   I'll retire to my prayer room after mediation to spend some time in prayer and read the Bible for about ten minutes or so. I leave feeling connected, thankful, and appreciative of the day ahead. I follow up with stretching and light exercise. Once I've finished with my light exercise regimen, I do some more stretching. This really

If you truly take a good look at yourself, are you being a little too risk averse? Are you leading a safe and careful life rather than taking some strategic risks? Not taking calculated risks in life can lead to a boring existence that may come with a large dose of regret down the road.   It's understandable that we want to be careful, especially when we're in the process of paying down our debt and trying to save every penny we can in order to apply towards our debt payoff goals. However, you don't want to pass up opportunities to start a business or doing something else that can actually boost your income in the short or long term.   I'm not saying that we should go into debt in order to start a business or join some other venture. What I am saying is that if opportunities come up, we need to do our due diligence, consider all of the facts, and make a decision as to whether or not to act on an opportunity or an idea based on a strategic risk assessment. Don't simply brush it off to the side just because you

Today I read a great article from Erin Cullum/Popsugar US. The article was an informational article about some things that we may not know about our local Aldi store. I can definitely say that while there were some items mentioned that I knew about already, there was also plenty that I learned for the first time.   If you haven't done so already, I highly recommend checking out your local Aldi store if you've got one in your area. We have an Aldi store nearby, but we didn't think to go there for years after we moved into the area. Now that we've started to go there, we shop there almost exclusively for all of our groceries. We save a ton of money on our grocery bills, but that's not all that Aldi grocery stores have to offer.   Aldi has in-house test kitchen chefs who periodically review the quality of their products before they hit the shelves. It's not just some of the products; they test every single Aldi product. I think it's great that they go out of their way to make sure that the products that they car

Sometimes you end up taking a few steps back on this journey out of debt, but that doesn't mean that you can't make up for it by taking several steps forward once again. When we fall behind on things or stop our progress towards our goals completely, we need to get ourselves back on track. Believe it or not, this happens more often than you realize and to tons of people, myself included.   I found several things that weren't exactly running smoothly with our household's personal financial situation. Communication is key in a marriage when it comes to money, and I have been feeling lately that the communication between my wife and me hasn't been on par. It's not that we're not working on the budget and trying to save money, it's just that the headlines aren't being brought out into the open and discussed as needed. I don't need to talk about every single detail with her, but I do need to get better at providing her with high-level overview headlines that she can easily refer to throughout the month to see wher

Have you ever added more layers to a decision than what was absolutely necessary? Do you overthink things or muddy the waters unnecessarily with too many details, and you end up not making a decision at all?   Rather than going through every possible scenario and making things more complicated, it's best to focus on getting the simplest answer and going from there. That way, you can take action as is appropriate. Even if you find later on that you're on the wrong path, you can always change course with lessons learned.    This concept isn't just related to paying off debt or making other decisions related to personal finance. You can also utilize this way of keeping things simple in almost every decision that you make. You'll get more accomplished because you will take action faster once you've made a choice on whatever question it is that you are pondering.   If you know someone who may benefit from this show, please feel free to share it by sending them to http://followmeoutofdebt.com. If you're on Twitter,

I've found myself doing this before. I get desperate for a few extra dollars in a particular budget month where I found myself in the red. The emergency fund is just sitting there, so I justify borrowing from the savings by telling myself that I'll just pay it back the following month. This isn't a good habit to get into, and it can turn into a very slippery slope once started.   When we do this, we train ourselves to use our designated emergency fund or sinking fund as a crutch. We allow ourselves to believe that our savings account is extra money that's just waiting around for us to tap into. We forget that we've already earmarked these resources for an emergency or for a sinking fund. We've already defined what the money is supposed to be there for, and we must stick to what we had designated in the beginning when the money was originally placed into the account, intentionally separate from our standard checking account balance.   Is borrowing from our savings from time to time better or worse than using a

You need to be intentional and have the right levels of focus and intensity towards accomplishing your goals. Are you lax with your debt payoff strategies? Are you letting 0% interest rate credit cards lie around without paying them off because it's still 0% for another year or so?   It's really easy to get into that mode where you tend to ease back on your debt payoff. You take your foot off of the gas pedal, and you lose the intensity that you once had. Nobody's saying that you shouldn't have fun, but you need to plan your fun as opposed to blowing off debt payment obligations that you've already planned just because you've got a vacation coming up.   You can take a break from debt payoff if there's a reason and an end game that has already been defined. Let's say you realize that your vehicle is getting by on borrowed time. You know that you'll have to replace the car someday, but you're not sure exactly when that will be. You want to save up for that replacement vehicle purchase in order to avoid car paym

I'm pleased to welcome Ericka Young from TailorMadeBudgets.com on the show today. If you're married, you'll definitely discover some great gold nuggets of value throughout our conversation that will help you with personal finance in your marriage, and if you're single, you'll learn a lot as well. There's a little something for everyone on the show today.   Pick up a copy of Ericka's book, "Naked and Unashamed: 10 Money Conversations Every Couple Must Have" by going to http://nakedandunashamedbook.com.   Learn more about Tailor-Made Budgets here: http://www.tailormadebudgets.com   Has this show been a big help to you so far? Would you like to return the favor and help me to help others? It's easy to do. Simply go to http://followmeoutofdebt.com/review and follow the simple steps to subscribe to the show, rate the show, and leave a review.

I'm tired of all of these pie-in-the-sky promises that are posted in various forums, social media groups, etc. Most of the headlines used for these posts are describing obviously unrealistic concepts, but somehow, they still get folks to click on the links. The headlines catch somebody's eye, and they'll end up clicking on the links out of curiosity.   Here's the bottom line. Regardless of your goals, accomplishing any of these goals doesn't work without work. You can't take work out of the equation when it comes to success. There are no shortcuts, there are no secret formulas, there are no hacks. You have to work in order to earn income, and you need to work more in order to increase your income. Your additional resources that you then earn are used to pay off debt faster. That's the only tried and true formula that actually works to get out of debt!   Don't get fooled by these get-rich-quick or pay-off-debt-quick schemes that are littering the interwebs. The only guaranteed way to get out of debt and get in