Dr. Wall ponders what your future could be without all your debt. It’s time to kick it in the butt.
The borrower becomes the lender’s slave.
Proverbs 22:7
Hey, folks, it’s time to get out of debt. Enough already. You don’t need all that crap. Stop buying it. You don’t need that $500 car payment. Pay cash for your Christmas presents and everything else. You want trouble? You want insecurity? You want worry? You want discouragement? Then charge up your credit cards. Put that new car on a payment plan. Borrow your way to a nicer lifestyle…for awhile.
Too many of us were doing this for too long, borrowing on our future so that we could enjoy life now. Look were it got us? What a mess. It’s time to clean it up. It’s time to get out of debt.
Here’s an interesting exercise: Add up all your payments you make each month to your credit cards, student loans, second mortgage, house payment, car payments or whatever or whoever else. Enter than number in a “future value of deposits calculator” (When you get to this web site, it is the 12th calculator from the top) in the monthly category. Now enter 10 years in the “term in years” category and and 12% (the stock market average over time) in the “annual rate of return” category and see what you get.
Let’s do an example for fun (feel free to run the numbers using your own situation).
Car payment: $500 per month
2nd Car payment: $250
Student loan: $325
Second Mortgage: $300
Credit card #1: $200
Credit card #2: $100
Total: $1675
Future Value of Monthly Deposits for 10 years: $385,314.80
Future Value of Monthly Deposits for 16.5 years: $1,033,787.12
A little over 16 years and you’d be a millionaire! What? Are you kidding me?
And what if we got the stupid house paid off and threw in another $1200 a month?
2875 for 10 years at 12% = $661,361.23
2875 for 20 years at 12% = $2,844,109.18
2875 for 30 years at 12% = $10,048,021.88
10 MILLION? AHHHHH!
And let’s say you quit eating out every other day, or cut out Starbucks or smoking or some other stupid bad habit that’s not good for you anyway and you scrape up another $1000 bucks a month to sock away. What then?
3875 for 10 years at 12% = $891,399.92
3875 for 20 years at 12% = $3,833,364.54
3875 for 30 years at 12% = $13,542,986.01
Read this a weep. Get rid of your stupid debt. It’s killing you. All that stupid crap you buy isn’t worth it. As Dave Ramsey says, your wealth is your number one wealth building tool. As Dr. Bing says, but if you are in debt, you are flushing your wealth building tool down the toilet. Enough already.
If you need a little inspiration to encourage you to knock off this debt here’s an idea. Dave Ramsey, the guru of getting out of debt, had a TV special on people who have been debt free for 10 years on Fox Business this last October 30th. You can catch it on hulu.com (search for Dave Ramsey on hulu.com and click on the October 30, 2009 show). If you need a little inspiration to encourage you to knock off this debt. Or you can click on it here (it’s about 50 minutes long):
http://www.hulu.com/watch/106555/the-dave-ramsey-show-fri-oct-30-2009
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Dr. Bing Wall is a marriage therapist with a practice in Ames and Urbandale, Iowa. To set up a time to see Dr. Wall click here or call 888-233-8473. For more information about Dr. Wall click here.
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