Over the past three or four years I have not been smart with my money. With problems with the business and trying to keep it going I have accrued about $50,000 in debt that is taking all the extra money that I have. It was to keep the business going and striving to be successful, so it was used for a good cause but it just wasn’t the smartest use of the money. It should have been used to do marketing and client attraction, but it wasn’t.
Anyways, we have come to the conclusion that we needed to do something about it and finally got into a program that will help us pay off the debt in a shorter amount of time.
What we were faced with was about $1500-$2000 per month just to pay the finance charges and the minimum payments. This was not helping us any and we were getting to the point of it becoming harder and harder to pay off the debts.
Cami and I had a heart to heart discussion and finally decided to change the way we do things. She is a saint and is amazing. Without her, I would be worse off then we are and I feel bad about dragging her through this. I tried to keep it from her and get out on my own and couldn’t ever make it work, so when I decided to tell her about it, I wasn’t sure what she would say or how she would react. But, being the sweetheart that she is, she said "this stinks, but we have to deal with it." She is a huge blessing in my life and I am eternally grateful for her.
We signed up with a company called The Freedom Point and got the process started. It took about two months from when I started talking to my financial freedom coach and getting things worked out, but it is done and we are on to achieve freedom and success.
Where we were was we were never going to be able to keep up and were not able to keep totally current on all our payments each month given the current situation. With the program that we signed up for is a three year plan that will cost us about $560 per month (actually save us $1000 + per month). Plus we just paid off our car and that saves us $318.88 per month. So, we can put the extra money towards further building the business and putting money towards our debt settlement plan. They are going to negotiate the debts and take care of all the dealings, which will be nice and we will probably end up paying off the debts, even if they are only at 60 cents on the dollar, but at this point we have to do whatever we can that is best for our family right now.
This is all worst case scenario, keeping life as is. My plan is to pay it all off, 100% on the dollar. The next post will explain how I am going to do that, hopefully in the next few months.
Bring it on!
