When you’re in debt, every day is stressful. You can’t sleep, you don’t eat right and you spend many of your awake hours worrying. The good news is that you can change your status faster than you might imagine. All it takes is dedication and commitment on your part and a rethinking of how you view money. Many people who live paycheck to paycheck receive windfalls of cash such as their income tax and instead of putting it away for emergencies, they spend the entire amount on items they want versus what they need. If you are ready to break bad habits and start living and enjoying your life, you can do it.
When you live paycheck to paycheck you are also setting yourself up for disaster. If your car needs work or an unexpected household repair comes along you end up using your bill money to pay for it, leaving you struggling to make it through the month. And once you make a few late payments or even miss a payment taking out a loan from a bank to get back on track isn’t an option you can use. The good news is that for the immediate future, you can apply for online installment loans. Companies like Maxlend Loans provide personal cash loans and installment loans in amounts up to $1250 as an alternative option to payday lending. Key benefits include minimal eligibility requirements, fast funding and flexible repayment. Qualified applicants must have a social security number, an active checking account, and a verifiable source of income. While this will help you to get over the hurdle, it should not become a way of life.
Establish and stick to a budget
You’ve heard it before and before you go thinking it’s easier when you have money to work a budget, that’s the whole purpose. In the beginning, you will test your resilience but, if you stay the course, you will break free from the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle and enjoy financial freedom. Gather your bills, set aside a few hours and find a quiet place to lay them out and list them. Include all of your household expenses like your mortgage or rent, utilities, cable and cell phone bills, any loans and credit cards. Then make a list of the average weekly cost for gas, food, child care expenses and whatever else you need to pay for during the month.
Reduce the amount of debt
Once you have the list together, it’s time to prioritize them into categories. Your mortgage or rent, house bills and personal loans fall into the must pay, then your credit cards. If you bring in enough to cover all of your bills then getting back on track won’t take long. All you need to do is to pull in your belt for a month or two and you’ll be in good shape. Refrain from things like eating out, buying a coffee on the way to work and brown bagging your lunch instead of ordering out will all help to give you the little extra you need to recover quickly. If you add up the numbers and you realize, maybe for the first time, that you don’t have enough coming in to pay for everything, then it’s time to pay your debt down fast. You can do this by reducing your cable bill to basic service and your cell phone too.
If you keep spending you’ll keep getting further into debt.
This one is simple to understand. Yet people still keep using credit cards more and more. The problem isn’t using credit cards once. Or twice. Or regularly, assuming you pay them off each month. The problem is that once you start carrying a balance, a little debt here and a little debt there quickly starts to snowball, and before you know it you’ve got a mountain of debt! Just like a little extra snack here and there isn’t a big problem. But once you start becoming overweight, the problem compounds, and next thing you know you are 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, or more over your desired weight. Simply put, overeating causes weight gain, overspending causes debt gain.
The more debt you have the harder it is to lose it.
If you put on a few pounds, you can usually get it off pretty quickly. But the longer you wait before trying to lose it, the harder it becomes to get it off. And before long you start having other health problems that are related to being overweight. Know the feeling? Well, it works the same with debt. Not only does your debt keep adding up, but the interest compounds, and your debt grows faster every month. Then one day you wake up and can’t pay your bills. Sad, but true for many people dealing with weight and debt issues.
Over spending can easily become a habit.
Everyone needs to eat. As long as you eat the right amount, everything is fine. But once you start eating for fun, or to relieve stress, or to deal with your life problems – or for any other reason than hunger – your overeating quickly becomes a habit, and not something your body needs. It works exactly the same way with debt. Once you start using your credit cards for fun, or shopping sprees, or any other purchase that you can’t afford to pay off or use cash, then it just becomes a bad habit. One that is very hard to break!
The banks want to keep you in debt once you get there.
A bank or credit card company customer with debt is a profitable customer. The more debt you have, the more interest you pay. And the more offers you get for more credit cards. Sadly, they don’t draw the line for you to let you know when enough is enough. Very much like someone who eats fast food frequently is a profitable customer for restaurants. So they do everything they can to keep you coming back for more. And they don’t refuse to serve you even if you are overweight or in bad health. So whether you have too much debt or too much extra weight, you need to be able to know when it is time to stop, or get help.
It’s never too late to get out of debt If you work at it.
There are lots of strategies for getting out of debt. And while none of them work overnight, you can get yourself out of debt no matter how much debt you have. There are different strategies for people with a little debt (debt consolidation or credit counseling), people with a lot of debt (debt settlement), and people seriously in debt (bankruptcy). The same holds true for losing weight – the older you get the harder it is to lose weight, but there are strategies you can follow to get rid of the pounds. A weight loss center can help you shed a few pounds, a trainer or nutritionist can help you lose more weight, and a doctor is a good choice if you have a lot of weight to lose (actually, visiting a doctor is a good idea for anyone just to make sure you don’t have any serious health problems).
You can get out of debt by yourself – or you can get help from an expert.
Putting together a debt relief plan is not that complicated. But sticking with it can be hard to do. In fact, statistics show nearly 75% of all people who start a debt reduction plan don’t finish it. So getting help from a debt relief company (or attorney if your debt is real bad) can help you stick with your plan. And it can often help you get better terms (meaning lower interest rates) than you can get on your own, especially if you have lots of debt and bad credit. Most people can lose weight on their own by exercising more and eating better. But if you’ve tried before and failed, then it can help your motivation if you join a weight loss center, hire a trainer, or visit a doctor if you are dangerously overweight. But which ever method you choose, whether you are trying to reduce weight or reduce debt, you need to be committed for it to work.