Follow Me Out of Debt | Get out of debt and get into prosperity!

Your credit score is more than just a number that financial institutions use to offer lines of credit or loans. The credit score for most people is an important number because there are other entities that will use your credit score to help them to know a little more about you. Two good examples of this are insurance companies and prospective employers.

If your credit score is good, most insurance companies will allow you to pay lower premiums for auto and other types of insurance. Poor credit scores may require a higher premium for insurance. While that might not seem to be fair, this is common practice in most cases. Employers might also pull your credit and view your credit score in order to get an idea of whether or not you might be more prone to participating in risky behaviors, and that ding on your profile in their records might be enough to prevent you from being hired.

While you are in the process of getting out of debt, tune in today to find out how you can raise your credit score at the same time. Your credit score is still relevant, so don't be destructive when it comes to your FICO score.

We don't make the rules, but in the spirit of playing their game the correct way, you'll want to do what you can to always continue improving your credit score as you move forward, and this will help you to make positive changes in your overall financial picture. God bless.

Whatever you do, don't let debt define you. You are a completely separate entity from your debt. As a matter of fact, you are the one who will be putting that debt in its place, and this is going to happen sooner than you think with the right mindset.

Before we get into that, let's discuss what happens when we've been in debt for a long time. When we have been battling debt for a while, or maybe not battling it at all, we can start to identify with that debt. We allow credit cards, loans, and other debt instruments to simply be a part of our lives to the point where we feel that they are just supposed to be there. That's not the case at all, and as a matter of fact, the opposite is true. We were never called to be in debt, but rather, we were called to be free of debt completely.

I've got good news for you. You will find your way out of this debt mess, and you will soon find yourself in a position of power and control again. Envision yourself as a general marching your army into battle against an enemy, and that enemy has been identified as debt. This is a battle that you will win through power, strength, perseverance, and Jesus as your Lord and Savior. He's always on your side, because you are on the right side. God bless.

When forming our spending habits, using cash is an absolute necessity. It is usually difficult to truly change our spending habits if we've been accustomed to using credit cards for a while and try to transition to only using our debit cards.

Plastic is plastic is plastic, and until you get yourself accustomed to the feel of using paper money and coins on an almost consistent basis, it may be challenging to break the habit of defaulting to pulling plastic out of your purse or wallet, whether that's a debit card or a credit card. Another huge benefit of spending with cash instead of credit cards or debit cards is that we will usually spend less. We will keep our attention focused on our planned list of items that we've intended to buy, and we'll be better able to ignore the endcaps or the clearance racks that are positioned strategically to grab more of our hard-earned resources.

If you would like to listen (or re-listen) to other episodes pertaining to the importance of using cash, give a listen to episodes 305, 272, 157, 143, 135, and all of the way back to episode 5. These episodes will help you to keep on track with truly changing your spending habits and will get you moving closer towards accomplishing your larger goals of paying down the debt even faster, and that is partially thanks to using cash as often as possible. God bless.

How much should your starter emergency fund amount be? Many times, you will hear that your starter emergency fund should be $1,000. Is that really enough for you? Is that even something that you can realistically attain in order to get started?

As I've said many times on this show, there is no cookie-cutter approach to personal finance. This is yet another example as to why we can't apply the same template to every individual person's unique situation. It's absolutely necessary to take it up a notch and apply a ridiculously easy formula that will help you to determine how much you should have in your own starter emergency fund.

Your homework assignment after listening to this episode is to take a good look at your own starter emergency fund. If you're just getting started, see if you can apply this formula to get to where you need to be. If you've already had your starter emergency fund in place for a while, perhaps it's time to revisit it and see if you need to make some changes. In either case, you will be better prepared for any emergency situations that may arise during the time that you're working your own personal debt payoff strategy. God bless.

It's time for a monthly check-in to discuss what I've been up to as it relates to getting out of debt and getting into prosperity.

I think that it's a good idea for us to touch base once a month to see where things are at on my personal journey to get out of debt and get into prosperity, and hopefully it inspires you to continue forging ahead with your goals as well. God bless.

The emotion of fear can be a source of panic, or it can be a good friend nudging you towards accomplishing your goals. The decision is completely up to you, and it almost completely depends upon the lens that you use to view fear to certain stimuli.

Whether you are on the instant knee-jerk reaction to fear side of the spectrum or on the more analytical side of processing a situation to its fullest, you can learn to use fear as a catalyst to accomplishing your specific goals. Those goals can be large or small, and of course, those goals can include getting out of debt and getting into prosperity. It is up to you how you choose to process this fear, and you have the opportunity to turn fear into a powerful ally, if you choose to do so. God bless.

If you can't afford to buy it twice, then you shouldn't buy it. If you follow this simple rule, it will make your purchase decisions better aligned with your overall goals to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

It's very easy for us to make a decision to buy something by thinking about whether or not we can afford it. Many times, we either consider the amount of cash that we have available to us or we consider how much available credit we have on a credit card. Rather than thinking about this on a single level, we should expand on this and apply some critical thinking concepts.

I'll go over some ways that I've learned to apply the golden spending rule to help make better spending decisions, and I'll also include a great tip on how to expand on this concept even further. Doing these things will help you to keep more of your hard-earned money in order to apply these resources toward debt, and this of course will help you to get out of debt and get into prosperity that much faster. God bless.

What is the best thing to do when you're having a bad day, week, month, or even a bad year? That first sentence sounds like the song from the TV show Friends, doesn't it?

The reality is that many of us aren't sipping coffee in a coffee shop with our friends as life simply happens. We're in the trenches, and we're dealing with the day-to-day battles that will eventually wear on us. We're not promised a perfect life, even as Christians, so that means that someday, we'll have a bad day.

When this bad day happens, it has the potential to creep into extending into several days before we realize that we're now experiencing a bad week. The problems may never be fully resolved and will have time to fester, so now we start creeping into a bad month. Before you know it, we might be fully immersed in a bad year, and it may continue even from that point.

The good news is that there is help available to end this cycle, and I want to guide you through the steps to discovering the four essential methods to turning around your negative situations that will happen in life in order to seek out the positive that is dwelling within these otherwise unwanted moments. God bless.

It's time for a monthly check-in to discuss what I've been up to as it relates to getting out of debt and getting into prosperity.

I think that it's a good idea for us to touch base once a month to see where things are at on my personal journey to get out of debt and get into prosperity, and hopefully it inspires you to continue forging ahead with your goals as well. God bless.

When is it appropriate to repair a vehicle as opposed to purchasing another? If you haven't had to ask this question yet, you will likely need to eventually.

I recently had a situation where I discovered that while my vehicle is still drivable, I will eventually need to incur a somewhat costly repair in order to keep my vehicle roadworthy. Sometimes our situations with our vehicles might be a little different, though. Perhaps your vehicle may drive just fine but you find that your vehicle needs other repairs in order to pass a state inspection, for example. In any case, when we come to the point where we need to decide whether or not a vehicle repair is worth the expense as opposed to buying another one, there are certain things that we must do in order to maintain a level head throughout the process.

First and foremost, we need to be sure to not quickly react because of panic. It's all too easy to hear bad news about our current vehicle and head over to the dealership. This is especially problematical if we end up taking on car payments again when our previous vehicle has already been paid off. Instead of dealing with that potential setback, it's better to not panic and instead take the time to consider all available options. You can be pretty inventive with this, too. Write down all of the ways that you could respond to this problem, and from this list, choose your best course of action for your particular situation.

The bottom line is this. Vehicles are not assets, and they should not be treated as such. They are liabilities that depreciate over time and usually cost money to maintain as long as you own the vehicle. Our best way of handling the financial aspect of owning a vehicle and the potential of having mechanical problems at some point in time is to prepare ourselves for this event and be ready for when it happens. God bless.