Eye on the Prize
So we’re going to play the credit hard ‘price shopping’ trick around here for a while. We’re working aggressively to pay off all of our debts and rather than use a credit counseling service (which others recommend and I don’t have a problem with in principle) we’re going to attempt to just get aggressive about paying things off and attempt to dump this debt for a life of freedom. Right. Freedom is a great concept, but I’m not naive enough to think we’ll get there in two days.
That being said, there’s lots to be free from in the world of finance and I want to set my mind on those goals for the short term and on financial independence in the longer term. I’m reading a book right now (a review will more than likely be forthcoming) called Seven Years to Seven Figures. In the first chapter it has a quote that I really want to share with you my readership:
“[Dale Carnegie] …said that while it is true that most people don’t succeed because they don’t have clearly defind goals, some people fail to make progress because they have too many.”
So we’re trimming down the goals that we have. They’re distractions. They’re the things that illusionists use to keep you from seeing how their tricks work. They cause you to fail to understand what is happening and instead keep you in a suspended state of mediocrity. This requires me to set my goals out in a list and hone them down into the one thing I’m going to focus on. I’m not going to worry about anything but nailing my debt down to zero for the next several months. Like Trent at the Simple Dollar I’m going to restrain myself and live with as few expenditures as possible so that November shines as the first month of focus [that conclusion was independent of Trent's but nearly exact in timing]. This is the first step in the race.
Bang - the gun sounds - I’m off!
Related posts
November 5th, 2007 at 10:18 am
I’ve been using CCCS for going on 3 years and have had a great experience, but there are definitely some downsides (don’t try to buy a car or house for at least the first year, and it does show up on some creditors on your credit report, could be derogatory), so I admire the effort to go it yourself. When I started with CCCS I couldn’t get lower rates (or switch to another card), I was totally stuck.