How to pay $2,048 in debt before Thanksgiving by doubling-down

Debt down

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Would you be interested in knowing how to pay off $2,048 in debt? We all know having a budget is important, but budgeting doesn’t work unless you do. That is why motivation, encouragement, and a vision to succeed is required when putting on the uniform as an Enemy Of Debt.

Follow these three ideas to pay $2,048 in debt before carving your next Thanksgiving turkey.

 

The power of a post-it note

Write your most urgent goal on a post-it note and stick it to your bathroom mirror. It doesn’t have to be prolific and it doesn’t have to be detailed. If you are getting out of debt then a little progress thermometer can become really powerful! Create one for your smallest debt, fill in the thermometer as you pay it down and include a date you expect it to be paid off. C’mon, you know it works. I dare you. I double-dog dare you!

But don’t stop there. Put a weekly reminder on your calendar. Better yet, create an Outlook or Google Calendar reminder that will show up every Friday at 3pm. Why Friday at 3pm? Having a pop-up notification or email will remind you that the weekend is coming – and the weekend is when we spend most of our disposable income. This will help you spend only what you planned.

Finally, set a monthly reminder to review your progress. We don’t celebrate our wins often enough – sometimes not at all! Having a periodic review of the past few weeks can encourage you to keep going and prove that you are winning!

Automate everything you can

Do you have everything scheduled in your bank’s bill pay? Save yourself tons of time by setting up utility and savings account auto-drafts so you can spend more time making money and focusing on eliminating the debt.

Your bank’s bill pay is also a great resource for tracking payments, which can help in the budgeting process.

For instance, we have our electric and natural gas set up on budget-billing. Every six months the payment adjusts (more natural gas for heat during the winter, less electricity).

I can look back at our bills from last year and budget what I think it might change to before it goes into effect. That makes budgeting much easier.

Double your efforts

It’s not what you think. I’m not saying you need to double your efforts today. What I am saying is to start out small and increase your efforts by a factor of 2 every month.

For example: You made a resolution to pay more on your credit card debt this year:

  • Send an extra $2 above the minimum payment on a credit card in January
  • Double your efforts around Valentine’s Day by mailing them an extra $4
  • Send $8 extra in March
  • Mailing in $16 more by Easter Sunday should be easy
  • Another $32 down before Summer Break
  • $64 in June
  • $128 around Independence Day
  • Double it again by sending $256 in August
  • What about another $512 after school starts?
  • Finally, send in a crazy $1,024 before Halloween

You have paid down debt by $2,048 before Thanksgiving, and that does not include the regular principle reduction. If you double the payment again you would put another $2,048 towards the soul-sucking debt.

I agree, making an extra large payment like that sounds incredible, almost impossible, but didn’t I just make you dream a little?

Crazy, but not impossible

We don’t know what the future holds. There could be raises, promotions, bonuses, or job changes in your future. Any one of these can likely happen in the next 12 months. What are you going to do with the extra money?

Think about setting daily, weekly and monthly reminders to encourage you to stick to a moneyplan, make it easier on yourself by automating bills, and lay out a plan to pay extra every month until hundreds of dollars are going towards eliminating debt.

It sure beats spending New Years Eve 2014 wondering where the time (and money) went!

About Steve Stewart

10 Responses to “How to pay $2,048 in debt before Thanksgiving by doubling-down”

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  1. Another awesome post, Steve!! You’ve given us huge motivation to see how we can really expand our efforts to pay off debt this year – thank you. 🙂

  2. If out of debt, a good way to save money too!

  3. Nice!
    It definitely isn’t crazy or impossible!

    • True Holly. I was just using the $2 in January as an example. If we increase that to just $5 then the doubling-down effect becomes $2,560 in October (and, theoretically, $5,120 in November). That’s a quite a bit of money! But it’s the “starting small and making small, incremental increases along the way” that becomes really powerful with what we can do with our money.

      Hmmm, maybe I should start doing this with my daughter’s savings plan for her car/college/wedding (in that order please)

  4. Wow, this is a simple but great way to pay down debt! Very creative and certainly not impossible 🙂

  5. J. Money says:

    Love this, bro. It’s funny that we all have to trick ourselves into doing stuff like this, but hell – whatever works!

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