Self Help Debt Reduction

If you’re searching for debt reduction solutions, no doubt you’ve been inundated with advertisements for various debt management programs, companies and solutions. The truth is, there are plenty of self help debt reduction options you can use to get your financial situation back under control.

While many of the advertisements you see encourage you to hand over the responsibility for your finances to other people, taking the difficult step of learning to manage your finances yourself can mean that you learn a valuable lesson. Once you’ve grasped the basics on your own, you’ll be in a much stronger financial position in that you’ll be less likely to get back into the same mess again in the future.

Here are some basic self help debt reduction options you can use to get you started on the right track.

Snapshot

It’s important to have an accurate picture of your current financial situation before you embark on a self help debt reduction program. This means understanding exactly how much income is coming in and how much you pay out each month in expenses. Include all forms of income you receive and write this figure down.

Your expenses list should include things like rent or mortgage payments, repayments on any other consumer debts, living expenses, utilities, fuel, groceries, school fees, and any other living expenses you have. Don’t forget to include the little items you buy, like magazines or lunches or coffee. They are still expenses too, so be honest about what you’re spending.

Starting Point

Write down your outstanding balances on all of your current debts. Include any unpaid bills in this amount and add up the totals. The total figure might look a little scary at first, but it’s important you know where you’re starting in order to create a plan of attack.

Alongside each debt balance, write down the amount of interest you’re being charged and how much you’re paying each month on that debt.

Plan of Attack

Self help debt reduction works best when you create a plan specifically designed to work for your unique financial situation. Trying something that worked for a friend won’t necessarily work for you as your situation is not the same as theirs.

Ideally, you should aim at reducing the debts with the highest interest charges on them. These are costing you the most money each month. If you can see anywhere at all in your current list of expenses where you might be able to save a couple of dollars each week, then you should immediately allocate those dollars into your debt reduction plan.

You might want to consider the option of a debt consolidation loan to roll the balances of the high-interest debts into a loan with much lower interest costs. This can help reduce your monthly repayments and give you a little more free cash each month.

Try to keep any smaller balances aside from the consolidation loan. The money you’re saving each month with your lower consolidation loan repayments should be put towards making extra payments on those smaller balances to get them cleared and out of the way quickly.

When these are under control, put that extra cash back into making some extra payments on your consolidation loan to help reduce that balance as quickly as possible.

While self help debt reduction takes time, learning to take responsibility for your own financial situation can be a vital lesson to learn. After all, it took you time to get into debt so be patient while you spend some time getting back out of it again.

Today's Challenge of Spirituality

To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task. Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, gadgets, and tools as well as entertainment through television, magazines, and the web have predisposed us to confine our attention mostly to physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the material and spiritual aspects of our lives?

To grow spiritually is to look inward.

Introspection goes beyond recalling the things that happened in a day, week, or month. You need to look closely and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically examining your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you have, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, on the good traits you must sustain and the bad traits you have to discard. Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any skill, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.

To grow spiritually is to develop your potentials.

Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. When you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the difference between these two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Christianity and Islam see that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology view that self-development is an end by itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for meaning.

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all things. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether we believe that life’s meaning is predetermined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we discover this meaning, there are certain beliefs and values that we reject and affirm.  Our lives have purpose. This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during trying times; and gives us something to look forward to---a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a drifting ship at sea.

To grow spiritually is to recognize interconnections.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all creation, live and inanimate. Thus we call other people “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our link to other living things through the evolution theory. This relatedness is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you.

Growth is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day encounter. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.