Chasing the Bull

Worrying about debt is no fun. There were times in college when I would unplug my phone in order to avoid listening to some jerk across the world tell me what a bad person I was simply because I could not pay my bills on time. I never defaulted on a bill, but there were a few times that I wondered if I would ever get out of debt.

Getting out of debt really involves a few basic steps.

1. Stop incurring new debt - If you continually buy things that you do not need and cannot afford, you will never accomplish this goal. The primary reason your debt is out of control is because you keep adding to it. You do not need credit cards. Period! If you cannot pay for it in cash, you do not need it. Your grandparents did not need them and neither do you.

2. Establish an emergency fund - The excuse most people have when talking about needing a credit card is that they only use them “in emergencies”. It is funny how that $5 coffee from Starbucks, or that 6-pack of Kronenburg becomes an emergency on your way to work or home. Save up $1,000 for true emergencies and then you will not have any excuses NOT to cut up your credit cards. This can take a few weeks, or a month or two, so have patience. Ideally, cash should be used for emergencies, not credit.

3. Develop a Debt Snowball - Dave Ramsey has developed an effective, yet simple, method to reduce debt faster.

• Order your debts from the lowest balance to the highest balance.
• Determine an amount of money to pay toward debts each month.
• Pay the minimum payment on all debts except for the one with the lowest balance.
• Attack the debt with the lowest balance with any extra money that you receive.
• When that debt is eliminated, do not change the monthly amount used to pay debts, but apply all additional funds to the debt with the next smallest balance.

While these steps may seam simplistic, I can personally vouch for their effectiveness. During the 13 weeks that my wife and I attended Financial Peace University, we eliminated $6,000 of consumer debt without an increase in pay. These simple steps work. Following them can help you to become financially free.

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My wife and I had our yard sale today. We are extremely pleased with the amount of money we made. At the end of August, we will send this off to Sallie Mae (student loan) along with any other money I can manage to make online. As this was our 4th yard sale in the past 5 years, we have learned a few things that can contribute to your overall success.The next time you have a yard sale, try and few of these and see if you don’t make a few extra dollars.

Top 5 Tips to Making More Money from your Yard Sale

1. Get Help - Most people will recruit a family member or two to help them during the yard sale. The problem with limiting yourself to asking people to help with the yard sale is that your help will actually spend the entire day helping you with the yard sale. What you need is someone to do unforeseen tasks that tend to crop up. We asked our neighbor to watch our 23 month old for a few hours so that we could concentrate solely on selling. Today, it worked like a charm.

2. Plan Ahead - Determine exactly what you plan on selling. Most people wait until the day before to start putting price stickers on their items. This is a receipt for disaster! Going into your sale, you should know exactly how much you estimate you will make. This will help you decide if it is worth the time and effort needed.

3. Get Plenty of Sleep - We dropped the ball on the one. I think we feel asleep about 4 hours before the sale actually started. This makes for a miserable afternoon. It is not too bad being sleepy from 7am to around 11am. Around noon, I felt like a zombie.

4. Don’t be afraid to say NO - Try and remember that the things you are selling are YOURS. If you do not want to take 50 cents for your Plasma TV, then don’t. Tell your customer no thanks and then move on to helping serious customers.

5. Take a Nap After Your Sale is Over - We do this as it allows for some yard sale closure. I am a big believer in living in the now. Taking a nap is like starting the day over. Any frustrations or concerns that resulted from your yard sale can be forgotten relatively quickly.

I hope these tips will help the next time you have a yard sale.

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliedermansky/

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