To reduce and eliminate consumer debt, you have to think in terms of multiples of threes:  Plan to earn three times as much money as you have been over-spending by; plan to reduce your expenses by three times the amount you have been over-spending by; and plan to have it take three times as long to eliminate the debt as it took to accumulate it.  If this seems like a daunting, impossible task, then you need some new strategies, because when you try to sacrifice for too long, you will eventually set yourself up for failure.

How do you move beyond the debt? You need to set a goal, discover the reason for moving beyond the debt, and determine what the rewards along the way will be

So much of personal finance discussions are focused around making money and accumulating a large sum for a distant date many call retirement. Along the way, and after this magical date, there is also this focus on making sure there is enough money and that you don’t run out. This accumulation model combined with ‘funnel’ thinking is the perspective that creates the added stress when making any sort of financial decision. There is always this thought process that says something to the effect of ‘will I have enough?’

The secret, of course, is to shift the perspective sideways so the focus is more horizontal. On a day-to-day basis, there are some very practical things you can do to help change your perspective to one of possibilities rather than fear of not having enough. Like what you ask? Quite simply by recognizing that whenever you shift your view, you also shift your perspective.
This means that if you are currently sitting while you are reading this message, if you shift your view to read it from a standing up position, then recognize the power this action has on how you see the information. Whenever you change the temperature, your location, your body language of any sort, you are also shifting your perspective. And, recognizing the impact this has on your energy levels at the time will also help you reinforce the importance of seeing all things from a different perspective – including financial decisions. When you are looking at your finances from a vertical perspective all the time you are inadvertently adding stress to your situation that can be minimized with a simple shift in how you look at things.

You know, money stress is such a funny thing. The only time we hear about it or think about it is in severe circumstances like when someone is getting a divorce, or married or in the case of death. For some reason, it seems socially acceptable to talk about it then. But otherwise, very few people want to admit that they have questions or issues. It’s such a taboo subject – very few people even want to admit that they want to learn. No wonder we have difficulties with financial education.

What is the answer? Well, I think we have at least part of the answer – providing information that is about wealth building on a day-to-day basis by teaching people how to spend money to get wealthy.
In case you haven’t caught on yet – I am not a fan of cutting back spending. There are two sides to the equation – spending and earning – it’s irresponsible to say ‘live within your means – spend less than you make’ without also looking at the other side which is ‘earn more than you spend’. Creating wealth and the infamous ‘quick fix’ seems to be generally accepted, but anything to do with learning day-to-day money or how to handle money stress is very much off limits in the water cooler conversations that happen thousands of times a day.