Gather Little by Little

If you are like millions of people in the US, you:

• Make $36,764/year
• Carry more than $8,000 in credit card debt
• Have 8 credit cards
• Owe at least one car payment, and most likely two each month
• Have a mortgage payment that is more than 25% of your income
• Have 1.3% of your Disposable Income in savings

With these kinds of numbers, chances are you’re living paycheck to paycheck and at the end of month wondering to yourself, where is my money going?

Most likely you’re reading this article because one or more of the statistics above look all too familiar right? Trust me, I know, I am right there with you.

In November of 2006, my family and I were hit with a major life crisis. I was temporarily out of work and faced with trying to figure out how to keep food on the table, clothes on the kids, and roof over our heads. These were things I had always taken for granted before. Fortunately I got my job back, but those few weeks of sheer panic really caused my wife and I do some serious soul searching of our finances. We had known for sometime that our finances weren’t great, but lived in denial about how bad they really were. Our crisis was, as I like to say, “The 2×4 In The Forehead” that brought us into a stark realization of how bad financially we really were. We were out of control and not heading in the right direction.

Like millions of Americans, we were living paycheck to paycheck, with no savings and tons of debt. Our debt consisted of our house, two cars, 401k loans, and credit cards.

I began reading everything I could and talking with family and friends. Thus began our path to financial control, and the basis for the series of articles I am going to share with you: Get Your Finances Under Control – One Small Step at a time. My sincere hope is that it will help you get on the path to financial control, and ultimately financial freedom.

It’s not any easy road by any stretch, and be aware it’s 10% number crunching, and 90% self discipline. Number crunching is easy, self discipline is hard: very hard.

Here are links to each of the posts in this series:

Step 1: Recognition
Step 3 – Create a Plan
Step 4 – Create a Budget AND Follow It!
Step 5 – Establish an Emergency Fund
Step 6 – Get Out of Debt
Step 6 3/4 – To Be Continued
Step 7 – Build up your full emergency fund
Step 8 – Payoff your mortgage
Step 9 – Invest
Step 10 – Enjoy

Luke 16:10 – Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.