does anyone else have any good ideas aboout Personal Debt Reduction?

Edwards Finance > Debt Consolidate

Q. In my opinion, most personal management/debt reduction books fail because they assume that all you have to do is decide to cut expenses, and that's that. They seem to be written for single people with will power, married without kids, and married people where both spouses agree on financial details and both have strong willpower. In my case, I have teenagers that refuse to help in anyway, and a spouse with differing ideas and priorities, and I have poor willpower. So most advice amounts just to wishful thinking. Ever-increasing debt has lead to stress and poor health. So what I have been looking for and instituting is financial control mechanisms - things that resolve or reduce the problem as soon as they are put in place, thus ensuring they work, and instantly reducing stress. Here are some of the things that I have put in place that have helped not only financially, but also relationally and psychologically: 1) Removed the ability to make long distance or calls to mobile phones. (here in Australia, the caller pays 40 cents per minute to mobiles) For LD calls, we now use a LD phone card - bargain at 5cents (3 cents US) per minute. That saves me $200 per month. 2) Very low water showerheads save me about $25 per month in water and electric. 3) Internet banking. I have one account where my pay goes into, no one has access to it by ATM. Bills are paid out of it by internet, and spending amounts are transferred out weekly.( prevents overspending) 4) a WEEKLY budget works, wheras a monthly one doesnt. You can go 3 days per week without spending, but you cant go a week at the end of each month without spending. 5) Match my mortage to my pay. I get paid every two weeks, and my mortage comes out at the same time (can't spend mortgage monthly) 6) Turned quartely bills into monthly payments by having the internet make automatic payments every month. 7) Flourescent light bulbs (GE ones are great, cheap, and warm colouring) 8) replaced credits cards with debit cards. 9) Got rid of one car So does anyone else have any good ideas? The criteria is this: Anything that resolves a problem as soon as implemented (like cutting up a credit card) rather than rely on wishful thinking (which is what most financial advice is)

A. I don't see it as a failure. I see it as recognizing that lack of willpower is part of the poverty problem and not settling for treating just the symptom. Refusing to use credit cards, for example, means you're losing the chance to build a credit history of paying revolving debt, you're losing float and you have far less in the way of fraud protection. If you had the willpower to charge only what you can afford to pay back that month, you could have had all those advantages without paying any finance charges. Similarly, sticking rigidly to a weekly budget means a loss of flexibility too. It might preclude you from moving up a planned food purchase a couple of days to take advantage of a sale simply because your week's budget is exhausted. (In practice, I suspect people don't follow the regimen that rigidly precisely because of things like this.) Stuff like low water showerheads and flourescents are fine but they fall into the category of cutting expenses, which is what the books are telling you to do. Obviously, instituting these "control mechanisms" is better than drowning in debt but the fact remains that your dependence on these is still costing you real money while willpower is free and the PM/DR books are right to recognize that.

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