The time is now for putting a plan together to become debt free. I’m going to talk about how and why the implications are far greater than you realize.
Life is short, and it’s important to live in the present as much as we can. But it’s also very long.
You could live to 100 and beyond. Our kids will almost certainly reach that number.
It’s hard to imagine ourselves at 80, 90 or 100, isn’t it? What will you look like? Will you be happy and healthy? I can answer that question for you thanks to a survey by ERBI.
But first, I want to share a story with you.
Some years ago, before my wife and I had kids, we were in Seattle for a wedding. While checking out the sights, we came upon a statue of the great Chief Seattle. There was an inscription talking about his life and impact, which resonated with me then and does so today.
In a famous speech, he talked about “the end of living and the beginning of survival” in selling the land to the United States. There’s immense wisdom in his thinking and his words that have practical application for you and I.
When we’re kids, we’re living every day. The shift from living to surviving happens through our insidious higher education process.
You want a job? Go to college.
You want to go to college? It costs a massive amount of money.
The child takes on student loan debt (tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars).
The child graduates, needs to find a job to start paying back the debt, gets a car loan, has rent to pay, you see where I’m going with this. The child makes the shift from living to survival.
Along the way, credit cards enter the equation and debt becomes a permanent part of their life.
That’s pretty depressing.
I want very much to help you and your loved ones break free of debt and get back to living.
Here are the questions I want to help you answer
Before I go any further, I’ve been there. I’ve been in credit card debt. I know how crappy it feels.
And I also know how good it feels to break free of it. That’s what I want for you.
So, no shame, no blame. Let’s work together to figure out how to get you where you want to go.
What makes for a happy (and unhappy) retirement
I talked about how I could see your future. Obviously, I can’t actually see your future, but this recent survey sheds light on the important factors that lead to happiness and unhappiness when we hit retirement age.
The survey found that having a retirement nest egg made people feel happy and secure, which certainly makes sense. A nest egg is money which is set aside and not earmarked for retirement income. It’s in addition to retirement income.
The survey found those with unmanageable debt were the most unhappy. These people we’re also found to have lower life expectancies, as well as an inability to save and budget effectively. They never learned how to handle money, and it cost them dearly later in life.
This is what I want you to avoid. I don’t want your future self to be crushed by debt.
What do you want?
Do you want your future self to be crushed by debt? Do you want to have a happy retirement?
I’m asking this; do you want to break free of surviving today, so you can start living again in the future?
Are you willing to trade some comfort today to make the changes?
If you’re in debt, you’re stuck in a cycle. Breaking free is possible for you, but it won’t be easy. It’s also time sensitive. If you’re thinking about this now, you’ve probably been thinking about it for a little while.
If you don’t take action on it now, how long will you put it off for? Will you end up being an unhappy 70 or 80-year-old responding to a survey on retirement happiness?
Let’s take this one step further. What are you modeling for your kids? If you stay in debt, if you keep merely surviving, will that increase or decrease the chances they get caught in this vicious cycle?
How to become debt free
The time is now. As we get older, time seems to move faster. You know if you put this off, years could go by before you once focus on it again. Here’s what’s required.
Get your head right. Making big changes requires the proper mindset and clarity on what’s most important to you and where you want to be. We have two free resources to help you gain clarity; our Goals Course and our Values Course. Completing those will position you for success.
Strategy and tactics. Get organized by gathering up all your debts and accounts. You’ll need to get a handle on your cash flow, create a budget and come up with a plan for reducing your overhead or increasing your revenue. From there, you’ll formulate a plan for getting out of debt.
Resources and support. Along with the aforementioned courses, we also have a free Get Out of Debt course, which will walk you through the process I just described. For additional support, I encourage you to connect with one of our coaches who can guide you through this process. We also have Masterminds throughout the year where you can engage with a supportive community of others who are going through this process.
Additional Resources
Life is meant to be lived, not survived. Think about your future self, the generation coming behind you, and make the hard decision to do whatever it takes to get debt free.
If you’re ready to take control of your financial life, check out our DIY Financial Plan course.
We’ve got three free courses as well: Our Goals Course, Values Course, and our Get Out of Debt course.
Connect with one of our Certified Partners to get any question answered.
If you’d like help getting on the same page with your partner, check out our Same $ Page Course.
If you’d like to help your kids get good with money, check out our Teaching Kids about Money course.
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Here are some applicable episodes of the LifeBlood podcast
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