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

It may not seem like it would be a big deal, but getting organized really does have a profound effect on our personal finances. If you haven't yet listened to episode 273 on the topic of minimalism, the concept of getting organized goes hand in hand with this process. As we begin to shrink things down in our lives and take things down to the lowest common denominator, we naturally bend towards getting more organized in many areas of our lives.

Organization is beneficial in many ways, and one of those ways is to be able to stay on track and on point with personal finance. Whether that's paying down debt, working on the monthly budget, or any other personal finance goal, being organized and staying organized allows us to function better with minimal confusion. We aren't as overwhelmed when we are working in a well-organized environment, and we'll find that we can accomplish much more than we would if we were sitting in a complete mess.

Taking some time to get grounded and get organized is highly encouraged, and I know that once you do this, you will be ready to tackle the many goals and tasks associated with getting out of debt and getting into prosperity. God bless.

We're picking back up with the habit of practicing minimalism, and it has been great. My wife and I started this a long time ago, but we didn't really stick with it the first time around and ended up getting off track. I think part of the reason was because we were trying to do too much at the same time and weren't as focused as we should have been. This time, we decided to do things a bit differently.

Rather than taking on the entire house and its contents all at the same time, we decided to start in a more focused way of doing things and concentrate on our closets first. By only focusing on this specific area, we were able to decrease the clutter quite a bit. I'd estimate that we ended up donating or discarding more clutter this time around than the first time that we had decided to do this. We noticed right away that taking a more granular approach to getting rid of what we no longer need didn't seem nearly as overwhelming and produced better results.

We ended up with several bags of clothing for donation and several bags of discarded items that went out to the trash. I also decided that it was time to sell an older gaming system that had been sitting around and collecting dust, so we got a chance to earn a little extra money for this month during this process. In my opinion, this makes it a little more fun when you can sell some things on Facebook or Craigslist and discard, declutter, and earn a little extra money all at the same time.

If you haven't already tried practicing minimalism, even on a smaller scale to start out with, I highly recommend doing so. It is amazing the freedom that you'll feel with the renewed space that you'll discover by discarding what you no longer need. You'll have more time and energy to focus on the things that truly matter, and you may even be able to make a few extra dollars to boot! God bless.

While we may not be crumpling up twenty dollar bills and pitching them in the trash can, we're finding other ways to throw away our hard-earned cash. Unfortunately, many of these ways that we throw away our money almost go unnoticed. We most likely don't even realize that we're doing it, and that's a dangerous thing.

I'll go into more detail throughout this episode, but in summary, here are the eight ways that we throw away our money. Number one on my list is paying credit card interest. We may not even be paying attention to how much interest we're paying on credit cards, and that's not a good thing. If you take a look at your statements and see how much you're actually paying every month to have these credit cards, it may make you sick and disgusted. Go with those feelings, and get these credit cards paid off as quickly as possible, especially the higher interest rate cards.

In my opinion, paying credit card interest every month is the worst out of the eight, but the other ways that we throw away our money are listed below.

Utilities: use less, pay less.

Gift cards: not using them is like throwing away the actual value of the card itself.

Gym memberships: if you're not using it at least once a week, you're simply donating your hard-earned cash to the gym.

Impulse shopping: stick to your shopping list, and don't deviate from the plan.

Keeping items that we don't need: hold on to your receipts, and return that which you do not use within a couple of weeks.

Throwing out leftovers: you bought the groceries, so you should consume them instead of feeding them to the garbage can.

Eating out too much: restaurants, even fast food restaurants, are simply too expensive.

Hopefully this list has helped you to realize just how much money you may be throwing away every month. Any way that you can find to save money, just do it. Stop throwing away your hard-earned cash, and you'll soon see that you have more available to you when you are mindful of how much you may be wasting.

Sometimes it's good to look back and reflect on some of the lessons that you've learned along the way, and that's what I'm doing today. Just like you, I've made plenty of mistakes in life. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; I truly believe that mistakes are there to teach us lessons. We become better people, and it's in part because of some of the mistakes that we've made and learned from.

The key here is the last part of that last paragraph. You've got to learn from your mistakes in order to move forward and forge ahead. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you may end up repeating the same mistakes a second or even a third time around. I'm guilty of this. I've been in debt, out of debt, and back in debt again. It's not easy to admit to doing something as stupid as repeating the same mistake, but there's a silver lining here. While repeating mistakes isn't recommended, it is one way of not only causing pain in the present but allowing us to also remember the pain from the past. Sometimes that's all it takes to make that mistake rear its ugly head for the final time. We can finally realize the error of our ways once and for all, and likely never make the same mistake again.

It's time to blow a hole through what you owe! I have a way of picturing things in my head sometimes, and recently I was picturing taking action to extend our arsenal available to us in order to blow a hole through what we owe. When we blow enough holes into what we owe, the entire debt structure will fall; our enemy will finally be defeated!

I love that visualization, and what's great about this visualization is that it's something that truly links well with reality. We need weapons in our arsenal in order to be able to cause some serious damage to our debt enemy. How do we get these weapons? We build up our weaponry just like any other entity who has declared war. When we declare war on our debt, the weapon of choice is additional revenue. Taking a part-time job or taking other steps to increase our income is akin to putting together weapons that will cause serious damage to this debt enemy of ours.

The larger the amount of increased income, the larger the holes will be and the more damage we will be causing to our debt enemy. We may be starting with a smaller hole, but once we gain some traction, each and every time we blow another hole in what we owe, we weaken our enemy even more. Eventually, we'll become so strong of an adversary to our debt enemy that our victory is almost guaranteed.

Let's go to war against debt! Let's defeat this enemy with tenacious persistence that knows no bounds as far as what it takes to win this war and stand victorious! God bless.

When it comes to money and personal finances, will you use or be used? Whether we realize it or not, if we're in debt, we are in a constant state of being used. Every time we swipe that credit card or sign on the dotted line of the loan form, we are allowing ourselves to be used by the associated financial institutions. We're voluntarily entering into an agreement to force ourselves to make payments for a given period of time and pay even more money for this privilege (I hope you are able to sense my sarcasm). This is truly a form of modern-day slavery.

The bottom line is that nobody likes to be used. There's almost always a negative connotation that comes along with the concept of being used. If we take some time to realize what is truly happening when we use the plastic or sign up for an auto loan, we'll definitely change our minds about this concept. We are no longer going to allow the financial institutions of the world to use us and profit from us. Instead, we're going to turn the tables in our favor.

How do we do this? We do this by paying off our debts, swearing off debt entirely, and eventually get to the point where we start to use money for our benefit. We stop feeling comfortable about being in the red and instead shoot for staying in the black. We start investing. We start saving up and paying cash for our purchases. We budget as a way to keep our money in check. We switch from being used to becoming a savvy and smart user of money. Doesn't that sound better to you? God bless.

We all have let-downs in life, and here is what you need to do in order to get through them and come out on top. First, you will need to absorb the hits that all of us will inevitably experience in life. If you have ever taken the time to study a boxing match, you'll notice that many times a fighter will move with the hit from the opponent. This essentially helps the fighter to be able to absorb the hit if blocking the hit is not possible.

You may have heard this referred to as rolling with the punches. Whatever saying or analogy that you want to use, the point here is the same: we all need to be able to flow with whatever problems we may come across. Perhaps you have received a rejection letter when you thought you'd definitely get that job. Maybe you recently lost your job. Whatever the case may be, you need to almost force yourself to go with the flow and move on.

Along with absorbing the hits, we also need to focus on maintaining a positive attitude as much as humanly possible. Yes, we all have bad days. That's a given. However, we will get much further ahead with an attitude that is more positive than negative. It may be a trite expression, but it still holds true: attitude is everything. Your attitude in combination with rolling with the punches will predict with great accuracy whether or not you will be able to truly weather the storms that you will face in life. Keep this in mind, and you will be able to handle almost anything that comes your way. God bless.

Dealing with money stress in marriage just became a whole lot easier. The best news that you'll hear today is that you do not need an advanced degree in personal finance in order to succeed with this. Each and every one of us has the same opportunity to accomplish this task, and if you're married, the two of you working together will only increase those odds in your favor.

Of course, it's not always going to be rays of sunshine while you go through this journey. Times can get tough. Bills can start to get behind. You may realize that you're paying hundreds of dollars, maybe even thousands of dollars, on debt and other expenses every month. This can cause anxiety and stress, and if you're married, it could have a detrimental effect on your marriage.

The silver lining in all of this is that sometimes the best comes out of the bad. Both spouses in a marriage stressed by financial woes need to realize that they're both to blame. They need to look inward, be humble, and communicate with each other. When both spouses admit some level of fault in the problem and stop playing the blame game, that's when communication starts to happen.

Turn your spouse into your teammate. The two become one, and a powerful one at that. With this newfound power, you'll also discover on this episode the four actionable steps that you can take right now in order to turn personal finance from being an agent of stress to being a catalyst for a stronger union in your marriage. What a great way to look forward to your upcoming success to get out of debt and get into prosperity together as husband and wife! God bless.

It's official! The first debt has been paid in full, and we're celebrating! It has taken some time, but we're happy to report that the entire balance on this particular credit card has been paid in full.

We were motivated. We had a no interest/deferred interest credit card offer that we used last year. This month would have been the deadline to pay the balance in full before the deferred interest kicked in to the tune of about $260.00. Who doesn't get motivated to save $260.00?

What's interesting is that not only was this a happy event, but it came with a healthy dose of motivation for us to want to continue moving forward. Yes, we discovered that automatically built-in with paying off debts is the motivated desire to pay off even more debt. We can't wait to tackle the next debt on our list, and while we realize that it will likely take some time, we are completely focused on accomplishing this next goal. It's like a healthy addiction; you truly want to experience more of the same feelings of accomplishment, and that's a good thing.

If you're currently in the process of working on that first debt payoff, don't give up hope. Keep going until you accomplish this monumental first goal. When you finally get to see that zero balance, it truly is incredible. Embrace the sense of accomplishment, and do something to celebrate! Keep the momentum going, and you'll soon find yourself well on your way to getting out of debt and getting into prosperity. God bless.

I don't personally believe in New Year's resolutions, but that's mostly because I believe that we have the ability to implement positive changes at any time of the year. With that said, my break that I took in the month of December was mostly due to needing to implement some much-needed changes with this show. The biggest and most notable change is going to be the extended episodes. Short and sweet is nice, but after careful consideration, I determined that detailed and actionable is what's truly needed in order for all of us to get out of debt and get into prosperity as quickly as possible.

My biggest goal for all of us in the year ahead is to make considerable headway towards crushing debt in 2018. We may not be able to get completely out of debt in a year, but we should be able to accomplish many of our smaller goals to get us further ahead than we have in the past. Taking action steps and staying focused for the long haul will be what helps us to truly accomplish our goals, and this is especially true as our goals become more aggressive.

I have to forewarn you that this won't be all fun and games. What we need to do in the foreseeable future will require a large amount of sacrifice. We'll reward ourselves accordingly along the way so that we do have some level of fun in our lives, but we're still going to remain focused on the bigger prize: getting out of debt and getting into prosperity.

Welcome to 2018. I'm excited to start this new year with you, and I look forward to hearing about the goals that you are able to meet in order to truly make this a debt-crushing year! God bless.