WHAT IS THE #1 THING STOPPING YOU FROM GETTING OUT OF DEBT?!?
You’re reading this post, so I know you, like me, know or at least feel life could be easier if you didn’t have debt weighing you down. Do you lack self discipline, money, time???
While having a job that put us on the very low middle side of income, The Doss Experiment was able to pay off all of our debt. We did this with a single income of less than $50K, two kids, and for about three years, my mom lived with us, too!
So what was the #1 thing that helped us pay off all of our debt?
SELF-DISCIPLINE
Self-discipline is the foundation for everything when it comes to reaching your goal of becoming debt-free The self-discipline to keep track of your spending. You need to keep a log and know where your money is going. The self-discipline to create and stick to a budget. Oh…and that cable subscription you DON’T NEED…you do need the self-discipline to cancel it!!! And the hard part for many…the self-discipline to tell your kid they can’t have that toy or those Jordans all their friends are wearing.
The Sad Truth…
Most people lack self-discipline. This is why famous financial planners recommend you have no credit cards. They suggest you buy everything with cash and tell you credit is bad.
They know the majority of people don’t have the self-discipline it takes to manage credit cards wisely. The easier solution is to just avoid credit, altogether.
I read an article about a faster way to pay off your mortgage called velocity banking. The article said this strategy, which uses some sort of credit, probably won’t work. This is because most people don’t have the discipline to make a strategy like this work.
Self-Discipline to Keep a Log
Keeping a log of every dollar you spend is the best way to start your journey to get rid of your debt. The first step if you want control of your money, you must control your spending.
If you don’t keep a log…
What is going to tell you how much you are spending or what to cut out.
How will you realize you spent $1000 of your $3000 income eating out.? What will tell you that you spent $3500 last month, but you only made $3000??
When the bank pre-qualifies you to purchase a $300K house, you won’t know you can really only afford a $200K house.
Self-Discipline To Cancel The “Wants”
My kids do lessons in school to figure out the difference between wants and needs. Strangely enough, many adults don’t know the difference.
They keep things like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and a cable subscription with 200 channels. No one “needs” any of these things…they WANT them. Then, they complain about not having any money and how they are drowning in debt.
I’m probably going to lose a few of you with the next few sentences…
- Not having Netflix WILL NOT kill you!
- You don’t NEED cable!!!
- Pandora(any music subscription) IS NOT a life necessity!
Self-Discipline to Say No to Your Kids
As I talk to parents nowadays, I can’t tell who the kid is. I don’t know how many parents asked how we get our kids to go to bed at 8:00. They are OUR kids. They go to bed when we tell them to.
Why are people afraid to say no?!? I get it. Growing up in low-income housing, I didn’t get to do gymnastics. No piano lessons for me, and I didn’t get a car when I turned 16. Never had a pair of Jordans and I had no college fund set up to pay for school.
The Doss Experiment wants to give our kids more than we had. Our kids already know…we are going to the amusement park, but we are not eating here. We’re going to the skating rink, but we’re not playing arcade games here. We play arcade games at Chuck E. Cheese’s. We can go to this restaurant, but we’re not buying sodas or juice.
There is nothing wrong with telling your kid no.
Delayed Gratification
What is delayed Gratification?
Delayed gratification is giving up something you can’t afford today – to have it when you can.
We’ve had about 6 cars over the years. When I met my wife, I had just purchased my 1st car on a loan in more than a decade.
We purchased one more on a loan. It was a 2008 Toyota Prius in 2011. At the time, we were new parents and we traveled up and down the east coast every other week to see family.
We wanted something that got really good mileage and we didn’t wait to buy it for cash. This car was good for us. We put almost 300k miles on it. Then, we paid it off and kept it until we couldn’t.
We’ve paid for all our cars in cash, upfront. To this point, we haven’t purchased another car using a car note, including the 2010 Prius, we have now.
If you know you want a car, act like you have a car note and just keep saving the money each month. Eventually, you will have enough to purchase the car in cash.
How do you use Delayed Gratification?
We used delayed gratification in these ways.
- We have a home with a lot of equity. It’s older and in need of updates.
- We saved up to get the house painted.
- We saved up to get a driveway poured in concrete.
- Were saving up to get Vinyl Plank flooring.
- We’re saving up to get Epoxy flooring in the basement.
We didn’t get all this at once. A home equity loan could have been taken out, or we could have put these things on a credit card. Instead, we are saving and doing them one at a time. We are delaying having the home we want by saving and not going into debt.
Discipline to keep a budget
If you haven’t taken any of the steps I wrote about above, you probably haven’t thought too much about a budget. You need a budget to get out of debt! You need to know what is coming in and what is going out (log). Once you know these, things, you have to cut out what you don’t need.
Cashflow
In the end, you need to make sure you have more money coming in than you have going out(cash flow). If you don’t, you have to cut more “wants”. If all you have is “needs” left, but not enough cash flow to save…you need to make more money (side hustle).
Once you have a positive cash flow, you need to have the self-discipline to use that to eliminate your debt. Most people get more money coming in and somehow find new things to spend that money on (income creep). If you can somehow increase your income and keep your lifestyle the same. You can eventually get yourself out of debt.
It’s a long journey, but discipline can shorten that journey and give you some control. Self-discipline is a choice. When you’re ready, you can make the choice to start your journey today.
“We all learned to walk one step at a time after MANY failures, but we all survived it because we didn’t quit!!!”
-Doss Experiment
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Please check out my other Blogs here.
Buying Your First House: Things Everyone Should Know
What’s The Best Strategy to Pay Off Debt?
The #1 Thing Keeping You in Debt
How to Create SMART Goals AND Achieve Them
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