Keeping up with the Joneses can get quite costly, quite quickly. The mentality is: “If I can’t afford it, I can borrow it.” And it’s not easy to avoid, with payday loans, title loans and 0% APR coming at us from all sides. Before we know it, we are thousands in debt and what looks like years to pay it off. Then the bankruptcy ads start to appeal to us. Instead of this, we should be learning and teaching our children the right way to handle our money.

But where do we begin? Our lives are so busy, with work, fast food and faster days, how to we slow down enough to put a plan on the table? It’s exactly that. Start with a plan. The first step in getting and staying out of debt starts with a plan, along with a promise, to yourself and your household: No more debt. You can’t expect to rid yourself of debt if you keep taking it on.

It begins, as I said above, with a plan. You need to know where your money is going, instead of wondering where it went. So, each month you will write out your total expected income for the coming month, then assign a name to each dollar you are expecting as income, and stick with that plan. You must understand going in, however, that change is not instant. Expect some growing pains as you learn this method, known as zero-balance budgeting. Plan on screwing things up for at least the first two to three months. Plan on making some changes midstream as you get used to planning how to spend your money.

Then, there are the credit cards. Learn that you can live without them. Cut them up. Stop using them. Debit cards are okay, but only as part of your cash strategy. Document your debit card purchases in the same manner as you do your cash. Don’t use the debit card as a credit card unless you absolutely have to. As you pay the cards off, celebrate.

Then there is Murphy. You know, the guy with the law that has a bleak outlook on life. The one that says no matter what happens, it can’t be good. He is the one who makes it very hard to get out of debt. Every time you sit down to try, Murphy shows up to say, “Uh-uh. What about the tires? What about the water heater? What about the transmission?” And out the door goes unexpected money, the money that was to pay some debt off this month, or worse, to pay for food. Instead, it goes into car repairs or other problems.

Enter the solution. Just like Grandma used to talk about, it is high time to start planning for these problems ahead of time, so that when they do happen — and they will — then you will be ready for these problems, so that they won’t derail you. And Grandma knows what she’s talking about, because during her generation, no one used credit to buy things, paying cash instead, and debt was almost unheard of.

So, these ideas should give you some food for thought as you begin looking for ways to finally get out of debt.

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