Let’s Talk About Goals

There used to be a popular advice columnist named Ann Landers. (Her twin sister wrote “Dear Abby” back in the day.) In one legendary exchange, a reader wrote with a conundrum about going back to school. They clearly wanted to return and pursue the degree they were unable to chase decades before, but worried about their age. “I’m already 39. It would take at least six years for me to finish and by the time I graduated I’d be 45!” Ann’s response was classic: “How old will you be in six years if you don’t go back?”

You may have noticed that everywhere you go on Goalry, we’re talking about how every decision you make about one part of your financial world impacts every other part of that world. How you organize your household budget (and how faithfully you maintain it) impacts your ability to save, invest, and get out of debt. How you manage your debt – from credit cards to truck payments to mortgage refinancing – impacts your ability to invest now and retire later. Better information about investing in real estate, determining the precise value of a home or other property, or making smarter insurance choices – they all impact your quality of life now and your capacity for paying your kids’ tuition or providing that dream wedding you never had yourself later.

Each financial realm has its own terminology and its own rules. Paying off student loans involves different rules and dynamics than managing home equity loans. Life insurance doesn’t work quite the same as health insurance or car insurance, although it has things in common with both. Bankruptcy works differently than debt consolidation and medical debt relief is in many ways quite different than most forms of tax debt help. At the same time, they all involve the same dollars and sense. Your dollars and sense.

Every choice, every obligation, every twist of fate – each one either improves your financial condition or harms it. It raises your credit score or lowers it. Over time, they collectively make it easier to do the things you like and take care of the people you love, or they make it harder. Whether it’s real estate, debt management, taxes, investments, insurance, loans, budgets, or other forms of wealth management, they’re all opportunities for us to get a little closer to our long-term goals or slide a little further away. For some of us, they’re a chance to establish those goals in the first place.

Is It Really That Important To Get Out Of Debt?

Debt can be a powerful tool to help us manage our obligations and pursue our goals. Debt allows us to own nice homes and drive nice vehicles while paying for them over extended time periods. It allows flexibility with our spending choices and leverage in negotiating. Most of us recognize, however, that debt can quickly become a burden, or a swamp – dragging us down and making it feel impossible to escape ore move forward.

That’s why so many experts focus on establishing clear debt free living goals. Some of them have great ideas and offer practical tools to help you get out of debt and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that if they work for you and set you free. We share many of the same ideals and ideas ourselves all over the various Goalry blogs.

Then again, maybe eliminating debt isn’t a realistic, or even a desirable, goal for everyone. But establishing a meaningful debt management goal certainly can be. Having debt repayment goals is essential to any long-term planning, whether we intend for those plans to be all about finances or not. If we don’t establish and stick to an effective household budget and commit to a clear “paying down debt goal,” it will be much, much harder to accomplish anything else we claim we want to over time. As with any other sort of progress – losing weight, improving relationships, getting a better education – all growth starts with honesty about where we are and what we want.

So let’s talk some real talk, shall we?

How To Get Out Of Debt?

The best get out of debt plan is to avoid unnecessary or unproductive debt in the first place. That’s a large part of why we started Cashry, Creditry, and Loanry as foundational elements in the Goalry Family of Unified Finance. Our blogs and online tools aren’t just about connecting with lenders. It starts with educating ourselves about different types of debt, and the pros and cons of each. The more we understand about the different ways interest rates are computed, the factors that shape our credit score, and practical ways we can avoid so much debt to begin with, the better we’ll be able to make useful choices about that debt.

Here’s a difficult reality about debt, however: it will probably take more work than you’d like upfront to make it happen and take longer than you’d like to see positive results from your efforts. Imagine a genie willing to grant you infinite wealth, but only $20 at a time, once per day. That’s still over $100 a week (and over $7,000 per year), but if you’re $25,000 in debt, it still feels like very little is happening by way of measurable progress. Except that it is – assuming you use every one of those $20 bills as specified in your debt repayment goals.

Learning to lower your bills is an essential part of meeting your debt management goal, but it may not feel like $10 a month here and $15 a month there are enough to make a difference. By themselves? Maybe not. But as part of your overall debt payoff planner? Absolutely! Educating yourself on the Debtry blogs about the best way to pay off credit cards may not feel like it’s turned things around for you in the first few months. But sticking to your budget and maintaining your focus? Over time, the changes are huge.

The big stuff matters, too, of course. That’s why we focus so much on educating yourself before financing a vehicle or taking out a home equity loan. That’s why we strive to connect you with the most practical options for your circumstances when it comes to insurance or personal loans. It’s why we keep bugging you about your credit score, which – fairly or not – dramatically influences just about every other financial decision and opportunity you’ll have.

Revising Your Debt Payoff Planner

Here’s another difficult reality of any “get out of debt plan”: sometimes stuff happens that messes up the plan. It may not even be your fault or in your control. You’re injured in an accident. A primary breadwinner loses their job. Divorce. Pregnancy. The economy. A pandemic. Plan on not everything going according to plan. Benjamin Franklin once famously said that the only two things in life about which we could always be certain were “death and taxes.” Sometimes it seems like perhaps he should have said “debt and taxes.” Dying may not be something we look forward to, but at least it’s free – well… for us, at least.

Finally, one last reality of your quest to get out of debt: it starts with you and your partner (if applicable) sitting down and having some difficult conversations, and working together on something we all know we need but far too few of us actually create and use – a real life budget. You can read more about making and using a budget effectively, but the short version is this: it’s time to account for every dollar that comes in and every dollar that goes out and make hard choices about what’s truly important to you. Most of us tell ourselves we know where our money goes. If that’s true, making and sticking to a budget shouldn’t be any problem. The reality is, however, that most of us play all sorts of little games in our minds to avoid thinking clearly about how we spend our money.

It’s your money – we’re not interested in telling you how to spend it. Nothing in your budget is about anyone else telling you how to spend it, either. An effective budget is about being honest with ourselves about what our spending priorities must actually be based on the numbers in front of us. Then, if we say we have (or want) different priorities, we can more effectively decide which numbers need to change or get moved around, and exactly how. If we’re unable or unwilling to do this, we’re not really that interested in getting out of debt or taking more effective control of our own finances. We just want to keep pretending we are.

We promised real talk. We didn’t promise it would make you like us right away. Give it time, though. Think of it as “tough love.”

Organizing Your Debt

So all debt is the same in some ways, and all debt is unique in others. Otherwise, things would be too easy and what fun would that be?

How can Goalry help you navigate and manage your debt? More importantly, how can we help you see your efforts to get out of debt as more than survival – more than enduring that burden or escaping that swamp? How can your debt repayment goals work together with your other financial goals towards a better life for yourself and those in your care?

First, we encourage you to set aside time each week to read up on the types of debt most impacting your life right now. The blogs at Debtry and across Goalry are intended to lay out complex ideas in plain, simple English, making them accessible to anyone. Check out our YouTube channel as well for similar resources. Check out other reputable sites as well. Everyone has their own voice and perspective, but over time you’ll notice common themes and similar approaches which you can use to shape your own strategies for eliminated debt.

Second, formulate a plan and stick with it. This works best after you’ve taken some time to educate yourself on the type of debt in question. You want to get out of credit card debt? That’s great – it’s a good idea and we can help. Your efforts will be more effective, however, if you understand the unique elements of credit card debt, consider the best way to pay off credit cards in your circumstances and within your budget, and incorporate your “reduce credit card debt goals” into your larger financial planning. Is a debt consolidation loan the best way to go in your situation or should you consider some form of personal bankruptcy in order to get a fresh start? Can your IRS debt goals be accomplished through budgeting and making some calls to try to lower your bills, or should you put off going back to school until it’s resolved? Or maybe it call all be managed as part of an overall plan for paying down debt goal marker by goal marker?

It’s not just about writing some checks and then hoping for the best. It takes time and planning.

The good news is that while we can’t necessarily make it all easy, you certainly don’t have to figure it all out alone. Helping people sort out their short-term crises and long-term goals is what we do.

Support And Resources

If the issue is business debt, or college student debt, or you need tax debt help – that’s why we’re here. If you’re struggling to find medical debt relief or looking for ways to avoid bankruptcy – we can talk you through some options. If you decide to pursue debt consolidation, we can help you find a reputable online lender which matches your needs. If you just need to run some numbers and figure out how long it would take to reach certain goals, we probably have some tools for that as well.

What we won’t do is promise you magical solutions or quick fixes, or regale you with tales of people just like you who simply joined this program or attended that lecture series and all of their debt magically disappeared. You may recall the old proverb about things that look or sound too good to be true… We’d rather you be happy with us in six months and even happier with us in six years. It takes time to get out of credit card debt, just like it takes time to get physically healthy or earn that professional accreditation. It takes time to pay down small business debt or raise your credit score enough to secure lower interest credit cards and better loan terms.

It’s also worth it.

In addition to our extensive libraries on real world financial topics, we offer a number of online tools and the opportunity to connect to lenders or other professionals based on your specific goals and at your request. We’re also about to unveil a number of apps designed to support your efforts to get out of debt. Technology allows a level of personalization and convenience inconceivable even a generation ago, so we’ve taken everything we’ve learned from the first generation of financial management tools and supports and re-imagined the ways in which they could be powerful and flexible enough to meet you specific needs while remaining as intuitive and easy-to-use as the mp3 player or camera feature in the next row of icon.

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Imagine categorizing your spending in real time with a few clicks or swipes. No more wrestling with receipts or line items on some statement, trying to figure out where you could have possibly spent $60.11 that late on a Sunday. Imagine a practical debt tracker alerting you when there are changes to your accounts or you’re approaching spending limits you’ve set yourself to help you stay on budget. Imagine if I could quickly pull up information from major lenders and online institutions alike and compare options to consolidate my debt as easily as I clear the bars on my fitness tracker or get driving directions to the coffee shop.

GET MEMBER KEY

We’ve studied the research. We’ve also read your emails. One of the most common reasons we don’t take more effective control of our finances is simply that it seems like it takes so much time and it’s all so complicated. It doesn’t have to be – at least not so much that you can’t go about your business quite productively once you’ve set your priorities. Imagine the same technology able to search the world’s databases and organize puppy videos used to help you meet your debt free living goals. Imagine a debt tracker that lets you make better choices while you’re living your life – not instead of living it.

We’re excited about the possibilities. What about you?