Declaring All Out War on My Debt

When I knew that my income would be relatively fixed and I knew I had a debt I had to get rid of or I was going to pay through the you-know-what interest I knew I had to get rid of my debt.

I had to get rid of my debt no matter what it took, NO MATTER WHAT IT TOOK, NO MATTER WHAT IT TOOK.

So I declared war on it. For ammo I had my 401K plan, what was left from the funds from the sale of my car, and social security and a small pension.

I saw these could handle the overage, so I did a bail-out.

I cashed out my 401K plan, took a huge hit, and paid off my master card bill. I had already stopped adding to the amount on my card but I had to something about the pile itself. I also dedicated the amount I had gotten from my car to retiring the overage.

It decimated my finances but had to be done. I've never looked back and never regretted it. Now I'm starting to build back up, slowly because interest rates on deposits are crap.

(To be continued)

Fiinancial Stability (Continued)

Once I got my revenue stabled, applying for social security I knew I had some work to do. So I had to figure out where my money was going.

I'd made some investments in my real estate practice was a thing of the past, I looked at all the automatic payments I was making to that support that practice would no longer be valid. So I did my best to get rid of those. Some I could just bail out on right away. Others I was contracted for a little longer so I had to put up with those payments.

By the end off three months time or so, all my payments for real estate things, like lead generation prgrams, web-based tools, etc. were things of the past. There was more work to do, and I'll tell you what I did next after that.

Financial stability

First I wanted my undiscovered country to be financially stable. That meant I wanted positive cash flow every month. Every month. Not up one month and down the next. But my revenues exceeding my expenses on an ongoing basis.

First, I had to get my revenue solid and consistent so that I would know what it would be. I was 63 at the time. Real Estate was giving me nothing anymore and with the great recession at full bore with unemployment pushing 10+ percent and no immediate prospects of that turning around my first job was to figure out where my money was coming from.

I could wait on applying for social security or I could do it right away. The upside of waiting was that my monthly payment would be higher if I put off applying for Social Security until I was 65. How much more.

I got the figures each way and did a little time-sequence analysis. I found it would be a good 20 years before my delayed income would make up for what I was losing by not signing up. So I signed up. My other salary potential is capped, but so far no other outside salary is likely to come along in the near future so not to worry.

More on this next time