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

Credit scores are still important. Many folks associate a credit score as a means to be able to get credit, but a credit score is used for much more than just approval of a credit line or loan. Certain employers may use your credit score as a determining factor of your employment. You'll need a healthy score for favorable interest rates on loans, including mortgages. Renting will be much easier and likely with a smaller deposit with a high credit score.

I have been doing a lot of research on the topic of credit scores, mostly because I've heard the repeated guidance from some sources to not be concerned about a credit score. After looking at things on my own, I am having a difficult time with the logic of purposely trashing your credit score. In this society, a credit score is important, and I think it's best to maintain or focus on raising your credit score, even if you aren't concerned about borrowing money.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

This is a follow-up to the Pomodoro Technique introduced on episode 176. You may want to listen to that episode first if you haven't already.

Find out how the Pomodoro Technique has been working for me.

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 strategies to 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 tips, updates, and strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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. If we don't take advantage of this, we are passing up free money. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. We're also passing on the experience that we can get with investing while we're getting out of debt so that we're not starting from square one years down the road.

The bottom line is that this decision is up to us as individuals. We just need to review our options, and just like anything else, make the best decision based on our particular situation.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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 likely be improved if you pay down your card balances and keep the accounts open afterwards. Credit scores have more to do with than just a means for obtaining credit. Credit scores are often used for determining insurance rates, whether or not you can rent, and even where you work if a potential employer uses a credit score and history as a determining factor of your employment.

So make a plan based on who you are as an individual. Don't feel that you need to follow a cookie-cutter approach to personal finance. Think outside of the box, determine the best plan for you, and execute on that individual plan and see how quickly you'll be successful with it. The reason why this will work is because it's your own.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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 professional together. The point is, don't just wait around and hope that your concerns will go away. Do something about it today.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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, and with the new confidence, you can set the next goal that will also be outside of your comfort zone. This is a process that will allow you to accomplish so much more than you would be able to if you didn't break out of your self-imposed limits.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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 you can comfortably look forward to life a decade from now.

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.

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 using the ideas on this list (which I have already started to do).

If you have a goal that you want to accomplish, I highly suggest that you do the same process that I did today. Sit down for about a half hour or so and identify how you will be able to accomplish your goal. List the means whereby you'll move forward with your plans, then all that's left to do is to get to work!

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 strategies to get out of debt and get into prosperity.