Goodbye to debt
Saturday, 10 March 2012 20:03
“The man without money is at the mercy of the man who has it,” said Napoleon Hill. Let us move motivation to a practical day-to-day dimension! A million aspirations and more have failed to take root because the man or woman who conceptualised them was bound in chains and locked in a prison by a common master: DEBT.
Debt has the power to break the vigour of someone who had the potential to achieve so much. It is very difficult to rejoice and celebrate when bound in chains of debt. It is even more difficult to create, innovate, and taste your true potential when an array of unfulfilled obligations hovers over your head. I have been in debt and I know that debt is a habit — it is a result of a perpetual imbalance between what you reap and what you slaughter. Debt grows from a small amount (a debt seed) until it evolves into a huge bitter fruit with spikes on it — ready to poke you.
It is a burden that can squeeze all the confidence out of you. Greatness isn’t always about money but, let’s face it, economic freedom is a good measure of progress and society often has a tendency of evaluating people on the basis of how much wealth one has acquired. Financially independent people receive more respect and honour than those with unfulfilled arrears.
Greatness requires that one be completely liberated from these chains of debt and doom by making a firm commitment to saying, ‘Goodbye debt — Hello financial independence’. Stop digging!
The moment you realise you want out of debt, the first and perhaps most important step is to stop digging. Debt is a huge hole that can completely swallow you. To stop this perpetual captivity, you will have to stop buying on credit, stop borrowing to finance day-to-day costs like expensive luncheons and unnecessary dates. Stop digging and be true to yourself. It is better to carry around an empty stomach and a clean debt record than to sell your freedom to another for the price of a quarter meal. To stop digging you may as well be required to temporarily downgrade the kind of lifestyle that you lead, perhaps sharing an apartment or taking up a more affordable dwelling.
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Goodbye to debt
Saturday, 10 March 2012 20:03
This allows you space to have some excess funds that you can use to close the pit of debt in your courtyard and propel your course towards financial freedom. What is your attitude towards spending? Let’s face it once more, personal debt is not a result of a volcano — take responsibility for it. It arises from a habit of living beyond your means. Someone who has a $6 000-per-annum pay cheque wanting to live a $20 000 lifestyle will ultimately accrue a debt of $14 000 per annum prior to interest charges.
To protect yourself from the slavery of debt, it is more than necessary to cultivate a habit of living a lifestyle that can be supported by your earnings. Do not occupy an upmarket townhouse that milks you of a huge chunk of your monthly earnings, leaving you trapped in a plastic bag with a little puncture on it to bring you some inadequate oxygen to breathe. Why suffocate yourself? Ultimately this is foolish self-submission to the prison of debt.
The young and unsettled always pursue to create an impression of prosperity beyond their true positions. The desire to become more admirable, more stylish and more lavish is a cheap way of buying respect for it steals from you the liberty to do more, to earn more and to eventually achieve the desired level of financial freedom.
What is your attitude towards spending? Do you splash the little resources you have aimlessly, feeding the children’s food to the dogs? Stop budgeting from your wallet
I reckon the day I received by first pay cheque, it was a moment of bliss. Yes! Finally all that hard work was beginning to bear fruit. Isn’t it a good feeling? But then I was young and unwise, withdrawing the entire sum straight into my wallet: no savings, no budget, just the perceived honour of a loaded Levi Wallet. No doubt, I had a few friends in this pitfall.
The danger in being so ill-disciplined is that before long the seemingly fat wallet will shrink to embarrassing and disheartening levels and the quest for survival and its demands will push you towards borrowing. What this merely means is that you begin to borrow from the future. When you receive your next
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Goodbye to debt
Saturday, 10 March 2012 20:03
lump sum, you will need to deduct the obligations of the past before fulfilling
the requirements of the present.
It is advisable and hereby encouraged that as a person in pursuit of greatness you sit down and gather your thoughts, determining how much you should spend within a month and on what exactly in explicit and clear terms. How do you apportion the grain in your barns amongst the requirements of your life?
A culture of saving The safest way of enjoying a better life tomorrow insofar as financial freedom is concerned is to live below your means. Ideally, what this means is that, say, you earn $800 a month you should ideally set aside $600. This is living below your means, allowing you to save $200 every month; these savings create a comfort cushion upon which you can land should you ever fall into the territories of an emergency. Debt often comes to people when an incident that requires money occurs yet they are unprepared and incapable of meeting it. It may be death, or sickness or an accident. These moments often push people towards justifying a need to borrow, thereby digging a new hole of debt.
Prepare yourself financially for all the eventualities that life may throw at you. Have your savings growing somewhere. This shields you when dark clouds come and you need cover. By having savings, you are also better prepared to capitalise when opportunities for investment that require
money arise. Sometimes you meet serious bargains and whisper to yourself before biting your lower lip, “Only if I had a bit of savings”. Money is an instrument towards an end — not an end in itself.
There is power in knowing what you want your money to do for you before it even hits the palm of your hand. Money in your hand is not an end, it is only a means, a medium. View money as your loyal servant who listens to you and submits to your precepts. It is not a master, not yours, not mine. We, as people, rule over money and we govern it. Such an understanding will bring you more
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Goodbye to debt
Saturday, 10 March 2012 20:03
happiness and peace, and takes away the unnecessary desire to appear more wealthy than you actually are for by so doing you protect yourself from incurring debt, keeping you free, shielding you and your creativity, allowing you to do what greatness calls you to do. Great Exploits!!! - Muyeche Chrispen is a new-generation African entrepreneur in the field of Human Peak Performance. He desires to see all people utilise their talents for the common good. For feedback and interactions, join him on Facebook and/or send your e-mails to: chrismuyeche@yahoo.com
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