Put that in your Snowball and roll it!

Want to get out of debt?  If you make any money at all, you can get out of debt.  No, it's not by filing for bankruptcy as that will ruin you and your spirit, but by working the Debt Snowball.  Here is how we get there.  First thing

1. Make a Budget!!!  If you sit down and create a budget, that is planning your month on paper before the month begins you will literally find money.  Remember that paycheck you brought in two weeks ago that you can't remember where all the money went?  It's amazing how much money you will find when you put your money down on paper.  List all your Income and all your Expenses and by expenses I don't mean your $20 a day latte habit.  That will have to go.
2. Sell Stuff!  Research has recently been done that shows that people on average have $10,000 of stuff sitting around their house that they could sell.  That alone will get the average American family out of debt or take a big chunk out of it.  Literally go around your house with a piece of paper and pen and write down everything that you can sell.  Have a garage sale.  Use Craig's list.  Lastly, use ebay.  Also, if you have a car payment or two and you cannot pay your car loans off in 18-24 months you need to sell the car or cars.  Yep.  That's right.  Cars are usually the biggest reason for debt.  Sell the car and pay cash for a $2000 car that will get you from point A to point B until you have gotten out of your debt mess.
3. Pay off Debt.  Ok, now that you've gotten on a budget, sold stuff, including the cars if need be, you are ready to tackle your debts.  Of course whatever you sold needs to go towards your debt, not a Nickelodeon cruise.  List all your debts (not including the mortgage) from smallest to largest and focus on the smallest one first.  Interest rates don't matter here.  We want to see wins along this journey and we want to see them early and often.  All the extra money that you have found after working your budget needs to go toward your debt snowball.  Pay the minimums payments on all your debts except the smallest and put all the money you can find toward that one.  When you pay that debt off, take your next smallest and add the money that you were paying to the last debt to the the minimum payment to this one and so on.  So as you keep paying off debts and adding more money to the next, your snowball gets bigger and you will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Some of this may sound hard to do, especially selling your cars, but there is nothing that feels better than being debt free and if you work this plan, you can be debt free anywhere between 12-36 months.  There are many tools to use online, especially at http://www.daveramsey.com God bless you on your debt freedom journey!

Scott the Money Coach