finance

This is part 2 of a series that I wrote August 10, 2009 when this blog was on Blogspot.com. I feel that it is as more relevant now as it was when I wrote it then. It is my hope that it is of inspiration and motivation that yes, an ordinary person can do this.OK, I’m back to continue talking about the resources I used to become debt-free. I mentioned 3 books in the last post and I’m going to talk about what I liked about each and what I used from each on my journey. Now this is not going to go along in a linear fashion as my brain does not work in that way.

I used “Debt Proof Living” by Mary Hunt and “Your Money, Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robins together, but I’m gonna start with “Debt Proof Living” first. “Debt Proof Living” is a really good basic how to on the way money works and how to get your money to behave as Dave Ramsey would say.

One of the things I really like and will talk about today is what Mary Hunt refers to as “Freedom Accounts”. Back in the day this was the good ole “envelope system“. My Mom & Moma (my mother’s mother) used the envelope system religiously and taught me the value of it. I had been using a version of the Freedom Accounts when I would take a certain amount out each month and set it aside for my renters insurance for the apartment I was in before I bought the house because that’s the only way the insurance company offered it. It was either a 6 month or 1 year policy…no monthly payment option. These “accounts” are also great for those “unexpected expenses” like car repairs, car tags, licenses fees etc. Anything that is not actually paid on a monthly basis.

I place “unexpected expenses ” in quotations for a reason. Whether we want to see it or not, these things are part of your monthly living expenses and if not recognized as such, can wreak havoc when they come due sending you running to the credit cards. Nothing wrong with credit cards if you use them in the right way by paying off the entire bill before it’s due but terrible if you don’t.

This is where many people trip themselves up because they do not have an accurate number on what it takes to maintain their lifestyle each month. When I say accurate, I mean including all known liabilities. If you drive a car in most states, if not all, you must have at least liability insurance, license plates/stickers which must be renewed yearly where I live, driver’s licenses every 4 years, tires that wear out, oil changes needed, and the list goes on and on. Y’all know what I’m talking about! 🙂 By getting all of this down on paper, you’ll begin to see that it really takes $2500 per month for you to live on. But you’re only accounting for $2000, thinking you have $500 to “play with”. Then you go and blow it on whatever has caught your attention. End of the month Day 30 rolls around with your car tag or homeowners insurance due. Now you wonder where in the heck am I going to get the money to pay this? Add in the refrigerator breaking down along with the car. See how this can get one in trouble?

Doing this also allows me to have overdraft protection on my account without having to pay the bank for the privilege, saving me money as well. What I did was to look at the due date for the “fixed” cost items like the license plate tag for instance, estimate a little bit higher than what I paid last year and divide that up into 26 payments because I got paid on a bi-weekly basis. I would deduct that amount from my checkbook balance as if was going to write check for the bill and mail it off. When the time came to pay it, I would add the total of the deductions back into my balance and write a check for whatever that amount was and start the process over at the next pay period. This is mucho easier if you use financial software such as Quicken. I did this the old-fashioned way before I got a computer, let alone financial software. For things like car repairs which don’t have a “due date”, I started out with an amount like $50 a month and put it in the “account” religiously. Time and time again, whenever something came up and y’all know with cars, SOMETHING is going to need fixing/replacing etc at some point in your ownership of the car, more often than not I usually ended up with enough money in the account to take care of the problem. You can use a separate savings account but I only did it for the large things like car repairs, homeowners insurance and property taxes which in my case while I was still paying a mortgage, were not escrow-ed for the first 2 years.

Before getting serious about taking charge of my money instead of it taking charge of me, I was one of those folks I talked about earlier. Many a car repair, you name it, ended up on a credit card which in the long run cost me more money because I was not able to pay off the balance charged when it was due. Yep, “stupid tax” borrowing from Dave Ramsey again…I done paid a plenty.

Stay tuned for part 3.

Resources I Used On The Road To Becoming Debt Free pt1 (ceraisis.net)

dump the debt (Photo credit: Friends of the Earth International)

This is a series I wrote back in 2009 when this blog was on Blogspot.com. I think it is as relevant as it was back then, if not more so now given the times we are living in.

I’m gonna start off by saying that getting out debt is not easy and not for the faint of heart. It can be compared to eating healthier, dreadlocking your hair or even wearing your hair out in its natural state. Though it may be a bit more accepted now, it’s still a long hard journey that takes loads of patience and thick skin. Why is that you ask? All go against the grain and many times the biggest opponents to your success will be your family and friends. I mention this because how well you can ignore their ignorance while keeping your eye on the prize is crucial to getting where you want to go. In addition to that, it’s a permanent lifestyle change, otherwise you’ll be right back where you started.

#1. IMHO, stop believing that stupid saying that’s been going around for decades that there is good debt and bad debt. I don’t think “bad debt” needs explanation however “good debt”, is paid off debt. End of story.

One of the keys to getting out of debt and staying out is to become conscious of what you are spending your money on starting TODAY!! Yes I’m shouting a bit but I’m trying to make the point that it is extremely important aside from point #1. Examine everything because if you are in credit card debt, more than likely there has been some unconscious spending going on! Many people have absolutely no idea how much they are living on vs what they actually bring home to pay the bills. Also a crystal clear distinction between needs and wants must be made. You may need a purse but you come home with a Coach or (whatever the designer names are) bag. No problem if you are financially OK, but big problem when you’ve got mountains of debt, doing these kinds of things for a long time, zero savings and the boss tells you that you’ll be out of a job in 2 weeks. Can’t quite live in or eat that Coach bag…can you?

Here are some everyday examples. Do you really need a cell phone and a land-line phone? Do you really need 25 calling features and voice mail on your land-line phone? I know it sounds like I’m fussing but I think I can do that because that was me at the time. lol Unless you are using every one of the features and making a lot of long distance calls, many times these so-called bundles are not saving you any money. In reality, they’re costing you more. Even if you are using ALL of the features and making a gazillion phone calls, there’s probably a cheaper way. As for voice mail, get an answering machine. That feature alone is approx $7 a month as part of that “package” so in a year you’ve paid $84. Keep the service for 5 years and you’ve paid $420. Now I know you can get an answering machine for way less that $84 and even on the rare chance you had to by a new one every year, you’ll still come out way cheaper and have $50+ dollars to put on that 20% interest credit card debt. Heck for that matter, in the case of long distance, use email more or **gasp** snail mail. It’s the drips like this when looked at individually, don’t look like much but when applied across the board begin to become cracks in the dam in terms of the money being used here and not being available for debt repayment. The only folks getting rich off interest are the bankers.

Another way I’ve let money slide through the cracks was not paying attention to the price per unit of whatever it is I was buying. Not to mention the health aspect but that’s another post. For example, I was eating ice cream at that time so I would get the

Image via Wikipedia

half-gallon of vanilla for $2.50. Looking elsewhere, I found a 5 quart container for $4.00. Now what most people do is look at the price of $4.00 vs $2.50 and immediately choose the half-gallon for $2.50. This can be applied for anything you are consuming on a regular basis. Before I got hip to pricing, I purchased more ice cream next week getting another half-gallon for $2.50. OK, so after 2 purchases, I’ve spent $5.00 for one gallon of ice cream. Now I’m sure y’all remember that 4 quarts is 1 gallon right? Go up just a bit in this paragraph and see how much ice cream I got for $4.00. 5 quarts. Without doing any more calculations you can see that I jipped myself out of a quart of ice cream. Not only that, I paid more for less ice cream! Now these were 2002 prices that I’m noting here so you know as I know, it’s gone up a whole lot more since. I bring this up to point out a practice that’s been going on for quite a while. But you gotta admit, the ice cream in the photo looks really good! 🙂 OK…back on topic.

I’m referring to how corporations are raising their prices and/or leaving the price the same but making not so readily noticeable changes in the amount of product. It boils down to what is still a price increase. They are counting on is you not paying attention. Think I’m kidding…here’s another one for ya. A pack of cookies, (it should be obvious by now that I love sweets lol) used to have 4 big cookies in it and cost $1.00. So that works out to be $.25 per cookie. Now, the company decides to change the packaging, tell you it’s space saving, bigger cookies or whatever jive talk that are spittin’ out and only put 2 cookies in there but leave the price the same at $1.00. Now each cookie costs $.50 each. That’s a 50% price increase!! In many cases using this same example, they’ve not only reduced the amount to 2 cookies, they’ve raised the price to $1.10. That’s an even bigger price increase. Many times it’s not quite as glaringly obvious as the last example but it’s there nonetheless.

So folks, ya gotta start becoming conscious and paying attention to where ya money is going. I’ve focused on this first because it’s the fastest and most efficient way to get more money freed up to have to accelerate debt elimination. What I came to find out was that I got more motivated to look for more ways to slash my budget so I did not have to go out and get a second job.

A few books that I used as road-maps on this journey were:

1)”Debt Proof Living” by Mary Hunt. She has a website of the same name as the book that is a paid subscription site which is quite reasonable at the time I had one. The non-subscription part of the site was nice.

Cover via Amazon

2)”Your Money Or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin

See if your local library has them first. Then if you like them, you can look for used copies or again, examine the details and see if buying them new will come out cheaper. With Amazon.com, if your purchase price is $25 or more you can get shipping free. I’ll talk more about these books and others later.

Are you ready for more? I hope so! Then on to part 2.

Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me or borrowed from the public library. I have no affiliation with the producer/manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product mentioned. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.