Debt-Free Forever by Gail Vaz-Oxlade (the beginning after the end read novel .TXT) 📕

There are a lot of people who say they won’t do something because they can’t do it perfectly. “If I can’t be completely debt-free by Tuesday, then I’m not even going to bother to try.” This is an excuse. It’s a sign of weakness that you can’t get past your idea of perfect so you can achieve some small glimmer of change. When learning anything new, mistakes are part of the process. Accept them. Learn from them. Move forward.

STEP 7: DO YOUR BEST

It’s hard getting from one place to another if you’re always beating yourself up because of what you haven’t done right. People who are successful at changing promise to do their best and accept that sometimes they’ll miss. But it’s the effort that counts. Don’t whine and moan about how hard the change is. Do whatever you can to make the change a new part of your life. And don’t resort to self-pity when things hit a wall. Say, “I’ve done my best today. Tomorrow I’ll try again and I’ll do my best.”

Through it all, you must be intentional. Each choice you make throughout the next days, weeks, months must be on purpose, not simply a spur-of-the-moment reaction to whatever stimuli has hit your brain. The only thing that’s going to get you out of a financial mess is to stop doing the bad and start doing the good:

• Stop spending money you don’t have and start living within your means.

• Stop flying by the seat of your pants and start making a plan for how you’re going to change things.

• Stop making excuses and start making changes.

• Stop whining and start taking responsibility for your past mistakes.

People are always trying to find someone to take over the reins of their money, clean up their mess, make ‘em rich. Sure, you can find someone on whom to offload the responsibility for fixing the problem. But it won’t stay fixed. Nope. You’re the person in the best position to figure out what went wrong, what you have to do to make it right, and how to never go down the road to Debt Hell again. This book has all the steps you’ll need.

You’re going to have to do the work yourself. I’ll warn you again, this isn’t going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be bloody hard, and only the strongest and most tenacious people will make it. Your success will come from your actions. And as you achieve each small success, you will learn (or relearn) how to trust yourself.

It’s your life and if it sucks, you may have had a little something to do with that. If you’re determined to change what you’re doing wrong, not just patch up the problem with some quick-and-easy short-term solution, you can take control and have the life you’ve always wished you had. And the peace of mind.

So, are you determined to make a better life? Are you sure you’re ready to change? Are you willing to do anything … ANYTHING … to get out of the mess you’re in? If you are, then you’re in the right place. If you’re still waffling, put away this book and go buy something else you don’t need.

PART ONE

FIGURE OUT WHERE

YOU STAND

1

ANALYZE YOUR SPENDING

Now comes the hard work!

Crap! Really? I have to do the math?

Darn tootin’. You’re going to have to sweat some before you can clean up the mess you’ve made of your money and your life. This is where you figure out what you’ve been doing wrong so you can stop. If you skip this step, you’re lazy, uncommitted, and looking for an easy way out. There is no easy way out. You’ve muddled up your money and now it’s time to do the detail work and sort it out. The numbers don’t lie, so you must get busy facing up to your reality.

Wait a second. Can’t I just start from where I am now?

You could, if you knew where that was. You don’t. You think you do, but it’s that fuzzy thinking that got you into a mess in the first place. The only way to truly know where you are now is to get completely familiar with where your money has been going. This is the step that separates the responsible from the immature, the committed from the wannabes, the successes from the failures. Skip it and you might as well just go shopping!

Ready? Then it’s time to get out all your bills, bank statements, credit card statements, a pen, a piece of paper, and a calculator, and get ready to do the math.

Every couple I work with has to send me six months’ worth of financial paperwork for me to do the analysis that shows them where their money is going. We enter all the numbers onto a spreadsheet to come up with monthly averages I use when I show them their details.

People are always shocked. The reason: most of us spend without a clue. A couple of dollars here, $10 there, $50 on this, $100 on that; in no time we’re in overdraft. How’d that happen? Here’s how you find out. Even if you simply take the last three months’ worth of statements and do the numbers, you’ll get a big ah-ha! Six months will give you a more realistic view. A year is overkill!

STEP 1: FIND OUT WHERE YOUR MONEY’S GOING

The next part of the process is going to take some time and some organization. It will help if you’re familiar with a spreadsheet program on your computer. But if you aren’t, it just means you’ll be doing a lot of pencil work. Make sure you have a calculator at the ready.

There are loads of people who tell me they “just don’t have a head for math.” I know that some people find the math challenging. If you can find a buddy to help you, great. If not,