90 Days to Financial Stability

Have you ever said to yourself, ‘I will start the new diet... tomorrow’; ‘I will start my exercise routine ... tomorrow’; ‘I will look for a better job...   tomorrow’; ‘I will take action on paying off my debt... tomorrow’. And guess what? Tomorrow never comes! The consequence of this is that we get fatter, less fit, more miserable at our jobs and deeper in debt. I know how this works, I have been there and done it. Until you decide that the pain of staying where you are in life is greater than the pain of making changes, your tomorrow will never come. I have talked before about taking action and deciding to do something is taking action. You could say that making the decision to do something is the first step. The next one is to create a plan, set a definite date to start and stick with it! Don’t get to your start date and push it until later. Start on your start date and even when the road to your goal gets difficult, stay with it. Humans are great procrastinators a

I posed the question in my Facebook group, Reduce Debt, Revive Dreams, of whether you should pay your debt off first or save money. Most of the people who responded were in favour of paying the debt off first. And that is a good strategy. After all, with debt you are paying interest, you are paying more money so paying the debt off faster makes sense. Right? Yes and no. Paying your debt off faster will save you money in interest payments. But what happens if you have an unexpected expense and don’t have funds available to pay for that expense? Whatever are you going to do? Delay paying for the expense until you save the money? Alternatively, put the expense on a credit card? Probably the latter, right?   Now if you had savings, you would be able to take some of that money to pay for the unexpected expense. Then you would just have to work to replace the money taken from savings. In fact, Dave Ramsey advises you have a savings of $1,000.00 before taking drasti

There are many ways to get out of debt and I will be discussing those in later posts but today I want to talk to you about perhaps the most important factor for getting out of debt. Taking responsibility for your actions. By taking responsibility, I don’t mean that you have to blame yourself. There is no blame here.   What I mean is that you acknowledge the fact that you were the one that got yourself into debt or allowed someone else to. Here’s what I mean.   In 1999, I went from earning minimum wage as a part time sales clerk to making $20,000 a year when the federal government hired me. Six months later, I more than doubled that income when I transferred to another position.    Just before my one-year anniversary, I woke up partially paralyzed on one side of my body. The doctors diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis and within three months, I went on disability and took a 30% cut in pay. The problem was that for that year I spent money as if it was water. A n

I had this blog entry all written on Friday. I thought I had my ‘why’ all figured out. You know, why I do what I do. Then I attended a workshop led by Georgee Low and discovered what I thought I knew was only a wee bit of my why. For the last few months, I have thought that I helped people with their debt because I don’t like to see anyone being left out and being in d ebt leaves a person out of so much. However, as I discovered, my why is more than that. My why in life is to inspire others so that they can feel recognized and powerful.   I do this by living right, honouring and helping with a sense of belonging while making great memories. I guide people through a 5-step process I used to save myself over $400,000.00 in future credit card interest charges so they can pay their debt off faster and regain the power debt took from them. Wow! That is so much more than just helping people not feel left out of life. Wouldn’t you agree? And by living in accordance wi

Did you know that at one time, companies could change the title of a job so they could pay a woman less than a man? A court case in 1970, Schultz vs Wheaton Glass, changed all that.                        In 1972, Katharine Graham became the first female CEO of a fortune 500 company. 1974 saw the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Until this time, banks required a woman to bring a man with her to co-sign any credit application. It didn’t matter what her income was and a bank could disregard some of it. Sometimes up to 50% of her income! A year later, the first woman-owned commercial bank opens in New York City – appropriately named the First Woman’s Bank. In Ireland in 1976, women were finally able to own their own homes outright. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed in the US in 1978. Now an employer couldn’t fire a woman just because she became pregnant. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines sexual harassment in 1980 e