Image by amanky via Flickr
The American Dream has been perverted. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been cruelly warped to mean “Toys, free stuff provided at the expense of others, and the ability to buy and do anything I want without regard for the consequences.” To fund this horrible new dream, the people who can’t convince a government program to finance it for them often turn to credit. Credit is the art of putting your future into hock for something that you probably don’t need or want and that won’t work by the time you are finished making payments.
Ick. I’ve chosen not to live my life that way. Every day, more people are waking from the consumerism fog and deciding to reel their lifestyles back in and take control of their lives. They take a look at the world around them, compare it to their check register, and realize that it’s just not sustainable. You can’t survive on credit forever. Eventually, you will realize that there isn’t enough money to continue to buy things today on tomorrow’s paycheck.
What’s the first thing you should do when you decide that a “normal” life—a life in debt—isn’t the way you are going to live your life?
Well, when you find yourself standing in a grave, stop digging. You can’t dig yourself out of a hole and you can’t borrow your way out of debt. If you want to get out of debt, you need to stop using more debt. Period.
It may seem impossible, and the people around you may try to convince you that you are crazy. It is not impossible, just time-consuming. Short of finding an insane amount of money hiding under your front step or a winning lottery ticket blowing across the sidewalk, there are no shortcuts to getting out of debt. It’s just a matter of making the payments and not using more credit.
As far as the haters, screw ‘em. They are brainwashed into thinking their unsustainable and insane lifestyle is not only normal, but necessary. You don’t get life advice in a padded room, and you don’t plan your finances with a debt-addict.
Getting out of debt is a simple process, but that doesn’t make it easy. It only has two real steps: stop using debt, and keep making the payments.
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Part of any plan of getting out of debt has to be figuring out what got you there. Questions like do you spend money when you feel bad? or do you go shopping when you are bored? or are you keeping up with the Jones? Is it your friends who are influencing you into debt? If yo can stop these behaviors, you have a better chance to stay out of debt after you pay off the loans.
You definitely need to know how you got there. You can’t break the behaviors without know that.
That’s a great cowboy quote and it remains true today. You have to stop digging and climb your way out of debt. It’s a long hard road, but it’s better to start early and deal with it now rather than when the hole is 10 feet deep.
What’s funny about the haters is that they seem to forget that modern day credit (as we know it to buy sh!t) didn’t seem to exist more than 50 or 60 years ago! and wasn’t main-main stream to about 20 or 30…
True. Our grandparents never used credit, except to buy a house, or occasionally to swing groceries until payday, but that was always paid back immediately.
[...] Jason from Live Real, Now tells us the first rule of getting out of debt. [...]
You’re absolutely right about the action to get out of debt is simple, although not easy to do for many.
But the problem once again is from living beyond your means. Debt means that more money is going out than coming in. It is not a right of anyone to live a life they can’t afford. And trying to live on only leads to stress, credit destruction, bankruptcy, homelessness, etc.
It comes done first to being happy with what you have to work with, living within your means, and using credit as a tool, not a path to nowhere.