Taphephobia- the fear of being buried alive

Ah, the last 2 steps and then you’ll be free (after finishing).

Step 6- Prevention

If you go and put all your extra money toward paying off your debt, what happens if something comes up? Will you just throw that unexpected expense on your credit card? You can prevent, to an extent, future $hit-storms from messing up all your hard work.

It just takes a little bit of saving. Sure, most of your money needs to go toward freeing yourself from the skanky (spell-check is telling me that “skanky” isn’t a word, but I know better) clutches of debt but you can still save a little bit.

Even if you can only afford 5 bucks a month, it’s a start. Putting away whatever you can afford can prevent new debt in the future.

For example: if all your minimum payments come to $65 a month (just an example) and you can only afford to pay $100 towards knocking them down, keep 5 or 10 bucks to start an emergency fund. Emergency funds can really end up saving your @ss sometimes.

Action to take:

♦ Commit yourself to putting a little aside each month. Something is better than nothing.

Step 7- Attack!

This is where you apply everything you’ve done so far and kick debt’s fat @ss! You’re ready and you can do it. Remember why it’s important to you to get it paid off and keep your original debt balances.

Keeping the original balances can serve as both motivation and to help yourself from accumulating more debt later on. Recognize all your hard work and find ways to reward yourself, preferably without spending too much money.

Action to take:

♦ Go 4 it! Knock that debt down and be done with it.

After completing these steps, I’d say you’re at 70% of digging yourself outta debt (assuming you’ve completed all the other steps). Congrats! You’re well over halfway there, once you’ve paid off all your debt you’re free. You’ll be able to leave Debtland and hopefully never go back.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rakka/1628979772/