Why We Are Committed to Living Debt Free

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? - Ebenezer Scrooge

Being in debt is simply no good - and if you lived in the 19th century it meant you went to live in a very unpleasant place where you were forced to stay (and pay rent!) until your family could pay off your debts for you. Today, debt simply sucks. Back then debt killed, literally - well maybe not literally, it was probably the dysentery or the tuberculosis that actually killed you, but it was debt 's fault for putting you in the stinky death hole of a debtors prison so it deserves some of the responsibility in my book.

In light of debt's uncanny power to give a person the bloody flux or consumption, my wife and I have decided that we never, ever, ever want to live a life that will put us into debt (except to buy a house). We have committed to:

• Embrace an attitude that values people more than things (frugal living to the max!)
• Develop an emergency fund for 6 months of our living expenses
• Save up to buy all our big ticket items before we purchase them
  
• Use a budget that balances for everyday and regular expenses
  
• Live a healthy and active lifestyle to reduce medical bills and future debilitating illnesses

The main goals of our debt free lifestyle are as follows:

• Impact as many lives as we can in a positive way
• Secure a stable and safe future for our children
• Be happy

We avoid debt because we want to make this world a better place, and it seems funny to me that something as simple as avoiding debt can be such an important part of that equation. But when you consider all the money that you need to earn more of to pay off your debts, and all the time that you need to spend doing so, and all the growth that money could have been doing in a high interest savings account or in the stock market, which might have allowed you to retire earlier, thus giving you more time, it really adds up to opportunities lost to impact the world for the better. There is no bigger time suck and money drain than paying a person for the ability to pay another person for something you want but don't need and can't afford.

For those that started off on the wrong foot, there are tons of resources on the internet about how to get out of debt. For the most part this information can be summarized as follows:

• Start spending less than you earn
• Put all that extra cash toward reducing your debt - interest payments slowly drain your life
• Consolidate your debt at a lower interest rate so that you can pay less interest rates
• Continue until your debt is gone

If you had the unfortunate experience of taking on debt as a student because you wanted to obtain a student signature loan then I am deeply sorry for you. But you don't have to live in that debt forever! Get out of it as soon as you can so that your money can start working for you instead of for someone else.