Getting Out of Debt, Staying Out of Debt

I think the most important thing you have to do to get out of debt and stay out of debt is to ave a plan and stick to it. There are several plans out there, and I don’t believe any of them really apply to every person’s situation. Which plan you use isn’t nearly as important as having a plan.

From what I read on other blogs, I think people’s biggest issues are sticking to the plan they’ve mapped out and making the plan somewhat flexible. I don’t think this problem is specific to financial planning either. I see it happen with people implementing any long-term plan.

First of all, let me state my general strategy on setting achieving goals. First, I seek out a person or group of people who have successfully attained the goal I’ve set. Second, I find out what they did right and what mistakes they made in order to achieve the goal. One thing I’ve learned is that I can save myself lots of heartache, failure, and time by learning from the mistakes of others.

This is not to say that I don’t make mistakes. I tend to make several no matter what I’m doing because I’m sort of stubborn and think I may know a better way. That’s okay too. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way in order to sink in.

A good example is when I first trained for a marathon. I wasn’t a runner and knew nothing about how to train, so I found a training schedule and found an experienced runner to give me some advice. She gave me two basic rules to training. 1) Stick to the schedule. 2) Don’t be a slave to the schedule.

What she meant by this is that the schedule is set up as a general set of rules and should be followed if possible, but everyone has different bodies with different needs. Sometimes the schedule has to be adjusted to fit those needs. In the end, if you don’t listen to your body, you won’t succeed.

I think the same thing applies to financial plans. From what I read and hear, lots of people start out with a good plan, but when things pop up that don’t fit into the plan they feel that their plan doesn’t or won’t work, so they abandon it completely. If they would just learn to not be a slave to the plan, they would learn to adjust the plan to fit their needs.

I think plans work out better when a few hard and fast rules are laid out at the beginning. A commitment to NEVER violate these few rules leaves some wiggle room in the rest of the plan.

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