Debt-Free Forever by Gail Vaz-Oxlade (best english books to read for beginners txt) 📗

Any of this sound familiar? Do you have a partner who seems to be from a different planet when it comes to how you manage your family coffers? If you and your partner are at odds, if one of you is allowing peer pressure to throw the family budget out of whack, you better sit down and figure it out fast before you end up divorced and broke.

Once you set goals for yourself and decide that shopping isn’t on your list anymore, you may have to rethink who you’re hanging with. People who aren’t friendly to your new goals won’t consider for a minute how their own spending patterns may be difficult for you to deal with. They’ll say, “C’mon, we haven’t been out for dinner in weeks” or “We’ll just go for a couple of drinks” or “You need to spoil yourself once in a while.”

People who are friendly to your goals, and are working to achieve their own dreams, will help you to stick to your plan. They will know that you’re working hard to make changes and they’ll support you.

Just because you’re watching the money now doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Having a fun night out doesn’t have to cost a fortune. While people who are not friendly to your goals may want to blow $100 on baseball tickets, your goal-friendly friends will be quite happy with a night of Scrabble and a pot-luck dinner. Yes, you’d have a great time at the game. And your pals may even offer to spring for your ticket cuz they love you. Then you’ll feel you have to go, spending gobs for parking, food at the stadium, treating them to drinks after as a thank you, and paying a babysitter.

Goal-friendly friends will be willing to point you in the direction of the best deal, along with ways to cut costs and have fun for free. They’ll remind you of just how rich life can be without constant consumption.

I’m not suggesting that you have to get yourself a whole new set of friends; I’m just trying to point out how peer pressure can mess up even the best-laid plans. If you’re committed to achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself, you’re going to have some ‘splaining to do if you want people to understand your new headspace. And if the pressure to spend is more than you can bear, then you’ll have to choose carefully where you see those friends so you don’t do yourself too much damage!

GOAL SETTING GETS EASIER

If your initial stabs at setting goals feel strained and uncomfortable, that’s normal. The first time you drove a car, your braking was jagged and your steering left a lot to be desired. The first meal you cooked probably didn’t rate four stars. And who among us hasn’t turned someone’s socks and underwear pink because we were less than perfect at sorting our laundry? Goal setting is a skill and it takes time to get good at it. It also takes practice.

It’s worth it. Learning to set goals will help you focus and concentrate your time, energy, and resources on what it is you really want to achieve. It will help you deal with obstacles, struggles, and failures because you have a clear picture of what you want. And instead of going with the flow and letting the whim of the moment or someone else’s interests determine where you end up, you will be consciously deciding which way to go to get to where you want to be.

Learning to set goals is a life skill, like learning to budget and learning to create a debt repayment plan. It may not be the thing you looove to do, but it is one of the things that will help you create the life you want to have. So do it!

4

CREATE A BUDGET THAT BALANCES

In Chapter 1 you figured out where your money has been going. Now it’s time to make a budget that will work for you.

There are three rules for your budget:

1. You can’t have a negative number at the bottom. It has to be positive or zero; the budget has to balance.

2. You must save something. Money has to go into your emergency fund and your long-term savings every month for you to have a balanced financial plan.

3. You must be making more than the minimum payment on your debt to get out of debt.

Use the Budget Worksheet on page6291–93 for your calculations. If you want to use the Interactive Budget Worksheet at www.gailvazoxlade.com, it’ll also help you figure out what ends up going in the Magic Jars, if you decide to use them. If you want to create your own budget, feel free to do so. Use the categories from the Budget Worksheet as a guide.

If you choose to make your own budget, don’t make one with so many categories that you drive yourself crazy trying to actually use it. Detail was very important when it came to doing the spending analysis. Ease of use is paramount when it comes to actually using a budget. If there are too many categories, you’ll get tired of entering in the detail and stop using the budget. You have to strike the balance between detail and ease of use that works for you. And remember, a budget is a changing thing, not a plan cast in concrete. Just as your life changes, so must your budget.

THE LIFE PIE

One of the features of the Interactive Budget Worksheet on my website is that it calculates the percentages for each category in which you’re spending your money. I call this the Life Pie. This is useful for seeing how well balanced your budget is and where you may be overcommitting your resources.

According to the Life Pie, 35% of your money should be spent on Housing, 15% on Transportation, 25% on Life, 15% on Debt Repayment, and 10% on Savings.

Housing consists of your