This post is sponsored by Lance Advisors. All opinions expressed are my own.
I am not ashamed to admit that in my 19 years as an adult I have not made the best financial decisions. I have gotten credit cards, got behind on bills, and spent more money than I should. As they always say your past catches up to you. You don’t necessarily think about your past catching up to you until you want to do things like buy a house or a car. Then you want to pay on the bills but then life gets in the way. That’s how you start racking up debts and credit card bills. Some people even try not paying taxes and owing the IRS because they think they can pay it back later. Terrible idea, that’s just debt that can land you in jail if you keep avoiding it (if you do owe taxes, see this website on tax resolution irs collection standards before it’s too late).
The moral of the story? Everything comes back to bite you eventually. So sort yourself out now before you start living from paycheck to paycheck. If you’re running a business then you are definitely going to need to make sure that your finances are in order as it can cause even bigger problems. Doing a debt service coverage analysis, check here, can help you see where you stand and what you may need to do in case debt does ever knock at your door. There are many resources out there so tap into them when possible.
One of my biggest challenges until two years ago was finding a job. So now that I have a consistent paycheck one of my goals for this year is to pay off some of my debt and to get my credit in good standing. I know there are companies like Lance Advisors that will help people to cut down their credit card debt. But I want to try to do it on my own first. I have been working on a plan to get that done with The Husband. Cause we both want to improve our credit.
Last year The Husband and I decided that now that we both are employed it was time for us to begin working on our past bills. Now because we are getting back on our feet we had to come up with a plan to begin slowly building our credit up again. This is what we came up with:
- Pay off past Credit cards: We have been working on paying off past credit cards. In fact we are already done paying off one and working on paying off another.
- Paying off past bills: We are slowly getting into good standing paying off doctor bills and other old bills. We make sure that we aren’t cutting into our current bills
- Paying current bills on time: We try to make sure we are paying our current bills on time. If not on time we set up payment plans to let those companies know that we have intentions to pay and keep our promise to pay.
With all our bills we make sure that it can fit into our budget. We make sure that we have all our bills put on our calendars and when we get paid we look at what we plan to pay off. So then each week we sit down and calculate them all. After we see that any extra money goes toward paying on another bill. The amounts vary each time but at least we are paying something on them.
Now if we do find ourselves need a little more help. We will probably look into a debt consolidation company such as Lance Advisors. Companies like this will help you to consolidate your credit card debt to help you clear your credit and get back on to a right path. This can be very helpful if you want to find a way to pay off all your cards at the same time.
