The price of debt freedom is eternal vigilance

Sometimes people go into a state of denial. Yesterday I wrote a post about how easy it is just to sit and stare at your debt and get caught up in the emotions of it. All the while you do nothing to combat it. Today I want to talk about the day to day element of your debt journey and how hard it can be to continue the fight on a daily basis. I find that while most people have the initial enthusiasm to tackle their debts the day to day struggle can overwhelm them.

The struggle with debt is all consuming. Almost all of your waking moments and probably most of your sleeping ones are spent thinking about your debt. How do you cope and function when you have such a weight on your mind? How do you focus on your day to day mundane activities when there are constant reminders of your debt situation? The answers to these questions are one of the key elements in solving your debt problem. If you can’t make it happen on a day to day basis then you will struggle to ever pay off your debt.

The daily struggle with your personal finances requires a lot of energy and focus. Almost every element of your daily activity is impacted by your finances. If you think about your daily routine every single element, from what you have for breakfast to what you wear to work has an element of money or more accurately have a cost element attached to them.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”

                        Thomas Jefferson

This quote holds true for debt management as well. You should read the quote slightly differently – “the price of debt freedom is eternal vigilance against unnecessary costs”. On a daily basis you need to make it your goal to examine the costs involved in your every activity, no matter how small. This is the price of debt freedom, paying close attention to your every cost.

You always have to look at your daily activity in the long term context. If you spend $20 needlessly today then that’s $20 less you’ll have when you really need it. So what is $20? Well think about it another way. If a plane leaves New York for London and it is even 1 or 2 degrees off target on it’s 4000 mile journey then it will go far off course and probably end up landing in Africa. Now if we take this principle of small differences applied over a long time and apply it to your financial situation you get a feel for the difference it can make. If you try to reduce your expenses by $5 a day then in the space of a year you will have saved $1825. I don’t know about you but for me that would make a big difference.

By adopting this attitude you are laying the foundation for greater freedom. As the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months you will get a greater sense of that freedom. The funny thing is that if you were to simply develop a better awareness of your daily costs then you would, almost by default, reduce your debt significantly. The small incremental savings that you make will all add up to something significant.

How hard is it to do?

Very! What I have written about above makes it seem real easy to do. I apologize if I have given that impression. Most people in debt have got into debt as a result of a ‘live for the moment’ attitude. What I am outlining above is almost the complete opposite – a ‘look to the future’ attitude. For someone who has amassed a lot of consumer debt trying to go to a place where they examine every aspect of their daily spending is like driving a car in fifth gear and then trying to put it straight into reverse. The end result? A badly damaged car.

Why suggest it if it is so hard then?

Well the simple answer is that while the actions above are hard they are not impossible. For that consumer who is driving at full speed in fifth gear it is possible to move down the gears and slow their spending. That’s all I’m asking. Start looking at your daily activities. No one is expecting you to change overnight but what is possible is a more gradual shift to cost reduction. It will take time to make these changes happen but time may be the only thing you have. Just remember the sooner you start making changes the sooner those debts will disappear.