Over the past 17 years, someone has stopped by my house and taken between $7 and $40 away from me, every single day. Not only have I allowed this to happen, but I have even invited this to happen!
Why would I do this? After all, I consider myself a rational person in most areas of my life, including money. I even like having money.
So, why again did I allow this to happen? Why did I allow and invite someone to take money away from me? Why did I say that it is okay for them to take between $280 and $1600 per month away from me?
Before you laugh at me, please realize that you may have allowed this to happen as well. Maybe your number is smaller or bigger than mine, but you may have allowed someone to come into your home and take money away from you, too.
“Not me”, you may say. “I am pretty good with my money and I certainly wouldn’t just give it away.”
I also feel that I am am pretty good with my money, but we both are giving our money away when we go into debt! I suppose that we may feel trapped and forced to take out massive loans for school. We may have gotten a new car because everyone else has one or we may feel like we deserve a new house in a brand new subdivision. We may even have emergencies like car trouble, medical bills, or home repairs that cause us to go into credit card debt.
The thing is, we are giving away money every single day by being in debt. Therefore, we need to treat debt the correct way, no matter how we got into it ….
We need to treat debt like a super-scary emergency!
One of the dreams that I had as a little kid was being sucked down the drain in the shower. This is a really weird dream to have, but I was terrified by it!
As an adult, one of the things that we should be terrified by is getting into debt or staying in debt. We shouldn’t think of debt as an inconvenience or something slightly annoying that we have to deal with every month. Instead, we should pretend that a hungry grizzly bear is chasing us and our family through the woods. The bear is just trying to fill up his belly, but unfortunately, we are the snack!
RUUUUNNNNN!!! ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! DON’T LET HIM GET YOU!!!
Don’t go out to a restaurant and put it on Visa if you already have credit card debt! Your $50 meal became $86.18 after just three short years and 19.9% interest! I’m sure the pasta was good, but probably not $86 worth of good!
If we are in student loan debt, we need to work every day like the bear has almost caught us. We need to sell stuff around the house, work overtime every week, or even get another 2-3 jobs. It’s an emergency! It’s not something that we should take 15-20 years to pay off. If we owe $10,000, we should pay it off in less than one year. If we owe $100,000, then hopefully our degree has helped us to get a good job, because we should pay this off in less than three years!
We need to get radical! We can’t get out of debt slowly! The bear is about to have us for a snack!
I am probably in the minority here, but I am even trying to get out of mortgage debt. Maybe a bear isn’t chasing me, but there are flies buzzing around my head. It’s not a life-threatening emergency, but I am still annoyed enough to get rid of this debt as soon as possible.
Any kind of debt will prevent us from truly succeeding financially. We may make a great salary of $80,000 per year, but having $9,000 go to a mortgage and $4,000 go to student loans will prevent us from gaining a lot of traction when it comes to some of our other financial goals. It’s tough to save money for our retirement if we have to pay a large credit card bill instead. We certainly can’t save for our kid’s college if we are buying a new car on credit every five years.
Imagine … instead of being in debt … that we have our entire salary to spend, save, and give! Could we afford to take a lower-paying job doing what we truly love? Would we retire 5, 15, or 25 years earlier than our peers? Could we give money to a local homeless shelter?
Yes! Yes! And yes! Being out of debt gives us freedom to do just about anything that we want to do. Also, I would contend that it is probably pretty cool to walk around your house and know that you own the entire thing!
Currently, my debt number is $7.25. That is the amount of money that I pay every single day in interest. That is the number that I could spend on my family or save for my retirement, but instead I must give away to a bank or finance company.
What’s your debt number? Let us know in the comments below.
And thanks for reading!
~Nathan
Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?
- You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
- You can get motivated and get out of debt.
- You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.
But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!
