Over $200,000 in debt with a smile on my face!

Author’s Thoughts

Run Your Life Like a Business Entry:

If you are $200,000 in debt, the only thing you can do is smile because all the worrying in the world is not going to solve a thing.  What I needed and what most people desire are the solutions behind the success of bailing yourself out of this type of hole. While there are a million books with solutions of many kinds, the solutions themselves ultimately start in the darkest places.  Deep down inside yourself where all the trap doors are shut and the rugs pulled over the top of them, is the basement where you keep these answers.  Finding the answers requires questions that are scary to ask. It means shedding light on parts of yourself that you would prefer to remain hidden. It means facing some of your greatest fears.  ”How the heck did I get here?…How am I going to explain this to my family?  What am I going to have to do, give up, and change in order to make this better? 

Sometimes your greatest fears are not the ones that related to riding the 5 G rollercoater at the amusment park or riding in an airplane or better yet jumping out of one.  I find that most people’s fears are the ones that they lock away in their own internal basement.  Crazier yet is that they continue to feed these monsters until they grow really big and scary.  Once they are pounding at the door demanding that they be revealed, it is almost to much for some.  With enough banging and disruption, it may not be you that opens that door. Rather, it is often a loved one and that can hurt so very much to have them see the monster you have created…one that they had no idea that was living with them this whole time.

I personally love to face fears and maybe that is why I subconsciously fed this monster in my own basement and allowed it to get so big.  I desired a situation that would require me to face that fear of great debt and certain family destruction.  It is in my DNA to create challenges so big that they seem impossible and then go out and prove to myself that I can succeed at such a challenge.  “What a challenge it would be to have to figure out how to get out of $200,000 in debt.” Somehow I must have ingrained this in my being because why the hell else would I go on day to day spending, investing and throwing money around? Maybe I subconsciously thought… ”What a great adventure that would be?”  “How much would I have to sacrifice and in return how much would I have to grown as a person in order to succeed at climbing this ridiculous mountain?”  It certainly was not impossible, but I was like a guy on Mt. Everest in shorts saying…”where the hell is all my gear and why am I wearing these god awful jean cutoffs on Mt. Everest…my friends are all going to laugh at me?”  So maybe, just maybe I subconsciously did this to myself in order to have a mountain to climb, and the adventure of taking on an impossible task and winning.  I had better keep check on myself in the future because I would rather spend $200,00o on real adventures traveling all over this planet than to pay back “The Man” behind the curtain.  “Toto I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore!”

The solutions are within in us, but you just have to keep asking enough questions.  If you cannot ask the questions, find someone who can.  I had to personally coach myself through this crazy process of running the numbers, strategic planning and setting goal oriented outcomes to achieve financial bliss…That is the bliss of not having any debt.

Between my business and my personal life, I had over $200,000 in revolving debt in May of 2007.  We are not talking ownership of buildings or homes in this equation.  (But I did have a house that I could not afford and that was not helping matters either.)  This was “crap debt” or revolving debt that was really putting the vice on every part of my life.  That debt is nearly wiped out as of today and it was because I started using the concept  Run Your Life Like a Business.  I had to look at every line item to identify the sources of the bleeding and then determine how to put temporary band-aid…wait lets call them tourniquets…on the wounds, while looking for ways to keep the same lacerations from happening again.  Every dollar coming in or going out had to be evaluated and tracked on the business and personal side of the books.  After nearly a year I have learned so much and have gained insight into solutions for the future.  I will share them often.

Businesses look at every single line item, expense, cost etc to make the most profit.  Maybe we (in our personal lives) should be doing the same since most households and family’s are more complicated than your average business.

So you may be asking how the hell did you face those fears, get the right gear, cover up those jean shorts and climb that mountain of debt?  The process will come out over time as I write, but if you can take in the value of the example below eventually you will see the overall picture.  Sometimes it can be the large things that can “cash us out” of existence, but often it is death by a thousand nicks.  Those little things will eventually bleed you dry.

Today’s example:

Reuse your paper grocery bags or better yet buy fabric ones.  Whole Foods gives a $.10 credit to every bag you bring in.  We use an average of 5 bags each time we shop. 

Here is the math:

5 bags x $.10 = $.50 a week.

52 weeks x $.50 = $26

You may say “big deal”…it is only $26 bucks a year.  I will soon explain ways to save more than $10,000 a year just by looking at the small stuff.  I promise you it does add up.  Think of what you would do with an extra $10,000.

Don’t forget the bonus of being great to our environment by reusing your shopping bags.

It is not how much you earn…it is how much you spend. 

Please feel free to share your favorite money saving tips by posting comments below.