Debt Snowball
Needing to kill a couple of hours while waiting
to pick up a friend from the airport, I wandered
into the local Borders store. One of my favorite
retail hangouts, Borders has all of my favorite
stuff: books on virtually every topic, a wide
selection of movies on DVD, and row upon row of
music CDs with headphones to sample tunes. It had
been some time since I last set foot in the store,
so it took me more than 15 minutes to get further
than 10 feet beyond the entrance.
Amongst the new releases, I found my first
purchase: Dave Ramsey's new book, "The Total Money
Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness." A
coworker recently turned me on to Ramsey's "Debt
Snowball" concept of paying off consumer debt. In a
nutshell, he advises paying the minimum on all of
your credit cards except one, on which you pay as
much as you can; then, once that card is paid off,
pay the amount you paid on card #1 plus as much as
you can pay on card #2, and stick with the minimum
on the rest; when #2 is paid off, pay what you paid
on #1 and #2, plus whatever else you can afford, on
#3 until it's paid off, and so on and so on. Pretty
soon, the payments you're making begin to snowball,
and your credit card debt begins shrinking at a
rapidly increasing rate.
Browsing through the book, I saw that Ramsey
offered many other highly useful techniques in an
overall plan to eliminate one's debt. It seemed a
bit counter-intuitive to spend more money to get a
handle on my debt, but as the old adage goes, you
gotta spend money to make money (and I consider
becoming debt-free "making money").
If I intend to follow Ramsey's plan, however, I
should stay away from this store for a long time.
Like a kid in a candy store, I can rarely get out
the door without buying something. Too much good
stuff!
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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