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

asses. Not everyone is cut out for the 70-hour workweek, but that means not everyone gets to play with the same toys.

There are ways to find balance. Everyone has to find their own path. Everyone has to do what works for them. But if you aren’t working hard enough to keep bread on the table without going into debt, you need to make more money. Get a second job. Get a third job. Get a better job. Find a way.

A very successful bank executive—the head of lending, as it happens—once told me that when she and her husband started out, they’d both do their day jobs and then they’d go clean bathrooms in a commercial building at night. Hey, man, whatever it takes.

GET A JOB!

When budgets don’t balance, it’s for one of two reasons:

1.Your expenses are totally out of whack.

2.You don’t make enough money.

It’s simple (but not necessarily easy) to solve the first problem: you cut back. However, if no matter how much you cut back, there still isn’t enough money, you’re suffering from Not Enough Money. This is sometimes tougher to deal with, although it’s been my experience that it just takes a little more effort.

When I work with families and uncover the fact that they just don’t make enough money, I make it a challenge for them to find a way to bring in a specific amount of dollars, net of taxes, which can be sustained consistently. People buck and rail at the idea of having to work harder. They think I’m totally insane. How could they possibly make more money? How could they make that much more money? How will they work harder and have a life too? You know what? They do it. Screaming and ripping their hair out, they find a way. And sometimes they surprise me by making way more money than I asked for.

While people like to wax poetic about all the reasons they work, when it comes down to the short strokes, most people work for money. Unless you are independently wealthy and working for the joy of it—in which case, I can’t imagine why you’re reading this book—money is more than a small factor in the decision to work. And when you don’t have enough money to keep body and soul together, you can either work smarter or work harder.

Of course, people’s desire for more money and the stuff it can bring sometimes comes into conflict with their belief system, their values, or their attitudes toward work. Take Michelle as an example.

Michelle wants to run her own business. She’s determined to be the master of her fate. She’s creative, focused, and determined. But she’s not making enough right now to keep body and soul together, and yet she has no problem booking a vacation with her girlfriends or eating out a couple of nights a week. She’s borrowing money from her parents, taking cash advances on her credit cards, and digging herself a helluva hole.

When I told Michelle that I loved her determination and focus, she glowed. When I told her she was doomed to failure, the light dimmed, and she looked at me askance. When I told her to find a way to consistently make $1,200 a month more net, you could practically see the steam coming out of her ears.

She yelled at me that if she took some McJob, she wouldn’t have the time to pursue her dream, her business wouldn’t work, and she’d be stuck in that McJob forever. She called me a witch who wanted her to fail. I was the demon who, like all the other people who have been telling her that her way wasn’t working, didn’t believe in her. Michelle was practically purple with rage.

And yet, when you look at the black and white of it, Michelle didn’t have an option. Her parents had said, “No more!” Her cards were maxed out. And she didn’t have the money to make rent. So what did she think I would say?

Michelle is no different than the couple who can’t make rent but have a big truck payment, the guy who won’t spend money on fresh veggies for his kids but gambles online, or the woman who wants to buy a very fancy car but hasn’t got a nickel set aside for her kids’ future education.

One of my mantras is: You can have it all; you just can’t have it all at the same time. You have to choose what you want right now. Once you accomplish that goal, you get to choose another.

Another of my mantras: It’s your life. Make of it what you will. So you can bitch and complain about what’s not working for you or you can figure out what’s not working, fix it, and have a great life. It’s all about what you want.

Of course, nobody said it would be easy.

BUST YOUR BUTT

Whether you get a better job, a second job, or a third job, you’ve got to do whatever it takes. It’ll seem like a life of hell for a while, but you’ll get used to it. And it won’t be forever. Just until you find a way to lose the debt so you no longer have that drain on your cash flow. Or just until your partner is back to work. Or just until … whatever has put you behind the eight ball is gone. Of course, if you’ve been a chronic under-earner, then you’re going to have to do some thinking about what you want from your life so you can reposition yourself in a better place. Or you can just be miserable forever. You have choices. You choose.

Years ago when my family emigrated from Jamaica, the woman who helped to raise me wanted her own opportunity. So she went to the United States on a visitor’s visa and she stayed. With no education, no financial nest egg, no job, Daphne got busy creating a life.

Daphne worked a full-time day job in a factory and a full-time