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

TIME TO PRIORITIZE

Now it’s time to prioritize the information on your Master List. For all the goals that are The Most Important, put an A beside them. The next most important goals get a B designation. The rest get a C designation. Rewrite your Master List grouping all the A’s, B’s, and C’s together.

The next step is very important, so don’t skip it. Compare your prioritized A list with your Core Values List to make sure the things you consider most important are supported by your core values. If there are things on your A list that don’t mesh with your core values, drop them off your list or move them to your B or C list. If there are things on your B or C list that need to be moved to your A list, do it now.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

When Maryann made her Core Values List, she noted that spending time with her family was of utmost importance, as was her family’s security. Debt repayment was near the top of her list since as long as there was outstanding consumer debt, the family’s future was not stable. But when it came time to prioritize her Master List, Maryann labelled annual vacations as an A item. She and her husband both work very hard, and she was determined that her family should get away together at least once a year to share a family vacation. The problem: either she would have to reroute money that should be going to debt repayment to a vacation fund or she would have to put the vacation on her credit card, racking her just-paid-off-debt back up. She had a conflict between her core values and her A list.

If Maryann were honest about the importance of her family’s security, she would recognize that anything she does that results in her not paying down her consumer debt or, worse, increasing it goes against her core values. And while a vacation with the family may be one way to share family time, it’s not the only way. Maryann might then decide to prioritize debt repayment, focusing her financial efforts on that goal, while coming up with creative ways for the family to spend time together having fun without spending the $4,500 the vacation would have cost.

If you’re in a relationship, it is at this point that you would share your goals. It can be pretty tough to achieve something significant if you don’t have the support of your best buddy. And since you may be coming to the table with different priorities, you may have to negotiate which goal(s) you start with.

SETTING MILESTONES

It’s all very well to wish you owned your own home, but what are you doing to make your dream come true? Have you started saving for a down payment? Do you even know how much of a down payment you’ll need? What kind of housing constitutes “a dream home” for you?

Owning your own home is a big idea. But if you’re going to need $30,000 for a down payment on a home, accumulating that kind of cash can seem like a daunting task. And every year that you haven’t come up with the $30,000 is a year you’ve failed to achieve your dream, right? Or is it? After all, if today you have nothing, and next year you have $8,000 saved, that’s a big step in the right direction. And you should celebrate that success.

Milestones work because they let you create small, achievable steps that can be realized more quickly. They also let you celebrate your incremental successes along the way. And that helps to keep you motivated to make wise financial decisions day to day.

Let’s say you want to be debt-free. Broken down, that means you may want to be free of all your consumer debt within three years, your student loans within five, and your mortgage by the time you retire. If you’re snowballing your consumer debt repayment (we’ll talk about this in Chapter 5), then you have made a list of your individual debts, so all you have to do to create your milestones is write in the date by which you want to banish each individual debt. As you vanquish each amount, you’re going to reward yourself by taking a hot bubble bath with candles and music, making yourself a big batch of brownies, or giving yourself a day off to do whatever you feel like. Your reward can be whatever turns your crank that doesn’t cost tons but makes you feel great.

A longer-term goal such as having your mortgage paid off at retirement may not seem to have many milestones. And if all you do is keep paying your mortgage on the schedule you’ve chosen, then this goal is a no-brainer. But you might decide that you’re going to put a principal prepayment of $6,000 against your mortgage every year. That means you’ll have to set aside $500 a month in your budget. Have that money auto-debited to your Mortgage Prepayment Savings Account and you’re on your way. Make the annual prepayment and you owe yourself a treat!

When it comes to saving, there may be several pools that you’re trying to build at once: the Travel pool, the Essential Emergency Expenses pool, the Blow Off the Job pool, the Educational Savings pool. Setting milestones for each of your objectives lets you feel a sense of accomplishment as you progress toward your goals. While having $12,600 saved for an emergency may seem like an unattainable goal, having $400 saved by the end of the summer may feel much more doable. Once you hit your first milestone, you set another, aiming to have $1,000 by the end of the year. And so you go, hitting your mark and moving toward the final goal step by step.

When it comes to setting milestones for your long-term savings, you can do it either based on an actual dollar amount—as in, this year I’ll