Now.. you’ve paid your taxes or filed an extension.  What is your current financial condition?  Have you been saving little bits of money in a tin or box?  Have you been writing down gift ideas for family members and putting them into the wish box or tin?  Have you been reading this blog for days or weeks, and not actually started doing anything?  If you have not started saving for Christmas or cutting expenses, its time for a decision.  You can end up this year in the same place you always are, or you can make some easy and fun changes and end up the year with great gifts for everyone on your list and a lot less credit debt.  Your decision, your choice!

It’s tax day.  If you’ve already sent yours in, good for you.  If not, make sure you meet the appropriate deadlines.  Penalties and interest just take away from your income.  If you can’t make the payment or can’t get the tax return filed in time, file an extension.  You may still end up paying interest, but will probably avoid the penalties.

Were you startled when you added up all the interest money you are sending to banks and other institutions on a monthly basis.  You probably even thought how nice it would be to have all that money to spend each and every month, but hesitated when I said you could do it in 2 to 5 years.  That’s a long time.  I want you to spend the day thinking about this.  2 to 5 years from now you could still be paying out this money to financial institutions or you could have it.  The 2 to 5 years is going to go by no matter what you do… Lets assume you are contributing just $500 a month in interest payments.  That’s actually a VERY conservative number.  Most people are giving away much more than that.  If you clear your debt, you would have over $5000 extra dollars to spend.  WHY are you OK with giving away $5000 every year to financial institutions?  I can’t think of any thing that I could buy on credit that makes it OK to give away my money.  Yesterday I said that the first step was to quit using credit.  I guess the first step is for you and your family to make a decision to quit giving your money to lenders.  They have enough!  Instead, make a decision to keep your money by paying off your debt and living debt free.

I have lived debt free for over 6 years.  I have about half the income I had before, but because I never pay any interest, I am able to purchase just as much as I could when I had debt.  Just to see what you could spend if you were debt free, do this little exercise:  Get all your bills.  Don’t forget auto payments, home loans, and automatic payments that you have.  Look on each bill, and find the interest amount you are going to pay.  (not the percentage, but the total dollar amount).  Add all these dollars from all your bills.  That total is what you would have extra to spend EVERY month is you were living without debt.  Just think of some of the fun things you could do with an extra few hundred dollars every single month. 

Living Debt free is not difficult.  It starts with a decision and then you begin to put into practice all the little easy things to get you there.  Right after you make a decision to live debt free, the first thing you MUST do is quit using your credit cards.  YES! All of them. 

If you read all the archives of this blog and continue reading you will find 100′s of little simple things you can do every day to get you debt free.  It may take a while, depending on your amount of debt and your desire to get out of it.  If you work hard at it, almost anyone can be debt free with the possible exception of their mortgage in 2 to 5 years. 

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had a little ham left, so I’m including one more recipe. 

Another broth recipe:

German Potato Soup

Ingredients:

3 to 4 cups ham broth 1 to 2 cups chopped cooked ham
1 head cabbage, chopped
6-8 potatoes, diced
3 carrots, diced
1 large onion, diced
2 stalks celery, sliced 1 tablespoon parsley
2 bay leaves

Put all ingredients into large stock pan and bring to boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are done.  Remove bay leaves, add salt and pepper to taste and serve.