Debt Elimination Success Seminar
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Section 1
A Look at Debt
History of Debt
Credit Card History
Current State of Debt
How You Got Into Debt
Good Debt Bad Debt
Business vs. Personal Debt
Section 2 Dealing With Your Money
The Two Step Plan
Doing The Two-Step
Step One
Step Two
The Paths Out of Debt
1- Create a Debt Payment Plan
2- Neogtiate Better Rates & Terms
a.Consolidation Loans
b.Consumer Credit Counseling Services
3- Negotiate Lump-Sum Settlements
4- Bankruptcy
5- The Easy Way
6- Win $1,000,000
Living Debt-Free
Manage Your Money
Make More Money
Save Money
SameMoney-MoreFun
Stay Debt-Free
You as a Business
Section 3 Dealing With Your Creditors
Alerts/Scams
The Credit Industry
Credit Industry
The Fine Print
The Secondary Debt Market
The Debt Collection Process
Original Creditor
The Charge-Off
Collection Agency
Legal Problems
Dirty Creditor Tricks
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Statute of Limitations
Cease and Desist Letter
Section 4
The Credit Report
The Credit Report
Credit Score
Credit Repair
Section 5
Dealing With Yourself
The Critical Factor
The Art of Prosperity
The End of Failure
Prosperity Coaching
Section 6
Kids and Money
Kids and Money
How to Pay for College
Section 7
Debt Information
Bookstore
Debt Facts
Radio Show
Resources
About Us
Privacy Policy
Site Map
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Consumer Credit Counseling Services |
Host: Tom Allen
Guest: Susannah Strong from MyDebtCounselor.com
Save Money Everyday
Tom: I’m Tom Allen and I hate debt. I invite you to make the decision today to join with me in living a debt-free and prosperous life. Debt isn’t something that happens just once a month when the bills come. It happens everyday when you don’t pay attention to how you spend your money. Susannah Strong from MyDebtCounselor.com is here to share some great tips on how to get out of debt one day at a time by saving money on everyday expenses. Susannah how important to getting out of debt is watching how you spend you money?
Susannah: It is very important. Hi by the way. How are you doing?
Tom: I’m great thanks.
Susannah: Its right up there with stop creating new debt. Which I know is one of the things you like to say a lot.
Tom: Absolutely
Susannah: Budgeting really doesn’t have to be painful and its one of those things people sort of avoid because they think it is a very painful thing. Watching how we spend our money is extremely important to getting out of debt so, of course, creating a budget is a every important way to make sure you’re tracking how you’re spending your money.
Tom: And for those who don’t like the term budget I like the term spending plan. But if you’re not paying attention to how you’re spending your money, if you don’t know how you spent your money last month there’s a good chance you got in to deeper debt.
Susannah: Yes you’re right. Budget is to diet as spending plan is to changing the way we eat.
Tom: When I think of diet I think in terms of something you go on for a short period of time and then you go off. But a spending plan is something you can stay on for the rest of your life.
Susannah: As with an eating plan if you really do change the way you eat, we’re not going to get into that. Really when you work out a budget you want to sit down and think about every single thing that you spend your money on. And decide what you might want to cut back on to try to save some money if you’re not saving any money or not paying down your debt. When you sit down with that budget you would actually have a family meeting or if its just you have a single meeting and think of everything on your budget whether it’s a fixed amount like your rent or mortgage or something that varies like getting lunches out or whether or not your going to buy clothes a bunch of clothes this month and not as many next month or whatever it is.
Tom: Even things like getting a haircut something that happens on a regular basis not necessarily on a monthly basis.
Susannah: Right haircuts, nails. I haven’t had my nails down in ages because it was the thing that I decided to cut out. Well I’ve don’t lots of seminars where I’ve had women their hand shoot up in the air, “I am not stopping my nails,” then don’t do it then don’t stop getting your nails done then. What are you going to cut instead? You just need to decide what you’re going to cut if you want to begin to save money. If you don’t ever want to begin to save money or if you don’t want to pay down your debt then cut anything I guess. But we’re not going down that path.
Tom: Sure
Susannah: We don’t want to talk about that. The other thing is what about the unexpected things? Vet bills. Holiday gifts. How many of us actually put aside money for a car repair? And that comes up and that’s normally where we’ll create new debt sort of out of necessity. You can’t not pay for the vet but how are you going to get the money? Well out comes the credit card and so you have to be able to put aside money or budget throughout the course of the year for those unexpected or the expected the holiday gifts that you know is going to be x amount of dollars and put away.
Tom: Yes, I don’t think most people have a clue really what they spend on a monthly basis. If you would take what you spend on a yearly basis and divide it by twelve it would be far more, for most people, than the think they spend every month because they don’t include the holiday presents, the travel at the end of the year, the Thanksgiving dinners, all the things that happen on a regular basis, those flat tires, those vet bills those things that are going to occur but you don’t think about because they’re not in your immediate plans. But you know what? You’re going to spend your money this year on all that stuff. So if you’re looking for a way to get out of debt and a way to save money. You better start thinking in advance that you are going to do that and plan for it then it’s not an emergency when the expense happens.
Susannah: You got it. And I see that time and time again. With the seminars that we give there’s a form that we use that’s just a basic budgeting form where people fill it out at the beginning and then we start to go through, for instance, the entertainment section and we start writing down all of the things that people can think of under entertainment. Because we need to be entertained we’re human beings.
Tom: We do.
Susannah: And that’s understandable. I don’t go to movies any more. I rent them because that’s my choice I want to save money there. And we start going through these things that people were coming up with ballgames with doing Thanksgiving dinner like you said with amazing things. I never thought of a ballgame and I’ve been to a ballgame this past year and I just didn’t write it down in my budget so I’m guilty of it as well Just things that pop up in each category you don’t even think that’s going to happen. Well, then what their supposed to do and commonly and unfortunately people aren’t committed and they end up not doing it but I strongly encourage anybody who starts this to really try at least for two or three months. What they do is at the end of the month they’ll keep all their receipts throughout the course of the month and at the end of the month they’ll write down really what happened. What did they end up spending on the food bill? What did they end up spending on the entertainment bill, on the miscellaneous bill? And it never ever equals what they thought it was gong to be.
Tom: Oh Susannah you can’t do this every month. I really say for the first month or so you need to keep track everyday. Until you start to get into the habit, maybe you can do it once a week, but if you start to only do it once a month you’ll be lost cause you won’t remember half of the little things, dollar here two dollars there, that you and they would up to be twenty thirty dollars at the end of the week and if you don’t keep track everyday you have no a clue.
Susannah: Right. Well if you save your receipts every single day from what you do it will make it easier then definitely at the end of the day to sit down with all the receipts and figure out what it is you’ve done to your budget, what have you done to your finances today and how can you improve it tomorrow or how can you improve it next month or whatever it’s going to take.
Tom: Well I always think we can not think of this in terms of depriving ourselves we don’t want to be paupers on our way to getting out of debt. We still have a life to live. The more fun we can make the experience the better results were going to have. What kinds of fun ways do you have to save money?
Susannah: Sure I love this. Actually this is one of my favorite things to discuss. There are a lot of really easy fun ways to make money or to save money. We talked abut coupons before in the past and how simple it is to think of a coupon as saving you money that’s what it’s there for. But you can really make it work for you. For instance if you save a coupon that you’ve cut out of the paper on Sunday and you don’t take it right away to the store the coupon usually expires in a month, month-and-a-half you take it later. Normally the store will not have it on sale the day or the week that the coupon came out but they’ll put it on sale the week after. You can get a little bit extra off that way if you use the double coupons if you go to a store with double coupons.
Tom: So you’re saying that if you hold on to that coupon for a week the price on the item is going to come down.
Susannah: Not always. But I’ve noticed, oddly enough, if I take the coupon to the store that day not only are they out of the product but the products not on sale.
Tom: Yes.
Susannah: And then if I wait a week or two weeks suddenly, oh, that products on sale and I’m going to get a better deal.
Tom: It’s kind of amazing that if you have the coupon on the day that it comes out you can save fifty cents. If you go back for the item two weeks later you can save fifty cents cause its on sale. Same price, hmmm.
Susannah: Yeah, well, then you use the coupon and you’ll save another fifty, you double it and you save a dollar.
Tom: There you go. Alright.
Susannah: There are other little things like writing companies. Tell them that you love their product or tell them that you’ve had a problem with their product. I recently wrote a frozen food manufacturer because there was, this is weird, because there was sand in the vegetables. And it wasn’t inedible I could tell it was just sandy vegetables that hadn’t been washed completely but I wrote a letter it was thirty seven cents and I had bought two products, two of the same dish, and they sent me a coupon for two free products and that’s three dollars and fifty cents, or what ever it is, for each dish. It was a thirty seven cent stamp and it was sort of fun for me to write the letter. And now I kind of have a form that I use if I have a complaint or if I have something to praise and I will always get coupons in the mail either for free product or at least a substantial discount on product.
Tom: I wonder if that works on airline flights and automobiles.
Susannah: You want to know what? I’ve actually done that. Okay two things. I just had my car fixed somebody hit it in a parking lot. Just today I got it back. Unfortunately yesterday the rental car broke down in the middle of the freeway and today they ended up waiving all of my insurance cause I paid the insurance the rental car was covered but I paid the insurance. Also he gave me an upgrade for the next time I decide to get a rental car. The other thing was when I wrote an airline they sent me a fifty dollar coupon for another flight.
Tom: So it works on big ticket items too. Susannah Strong from MyDebtCounselor.com will be right back with us in our next segment. For more information on getting and staying out of debt visit IHateDebt.com. We’ll be right back.
Read the transcript from Susannah's next segment Get Out of Debt Faster
Susannah Strong from MyDebtCounselor.com Saving Money Everyday
CareOne Consumer Credit Counseling Services
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Or you can mail in your contribution.