For the past 14 years, I’ve never been in debt, I’ve never paid a late fee or interest charges, my credit score has always been in the 700s and 800s and my payment record has always been 100%. AND, in the past 14 years, I’ve been through the recession, a freeze on raises, recurring illness, disability, layoff, unemployment, a major pay cut, and quit my last job to risk it all and begin my writing, blogging, and YouTube career. You can stay out of debt too!
Well, hello friend! I know it’s been a while since I’ve shown my physical face here, but I figured it was about time I start my Financial Transformation Thursday series WOOHOO! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but organizing and finances go hand in hand. While I show you how to transform your spaces, I love showing you how to transform your finances as well!
I’m Terry Elisabeth, author of “How to Organize Any Space in 7 Simplified Steps” where I show you how to organize your spaces according to your personal organizing style so that your spaces can finally stay organized.
If you need help organizing or just love organizing videos, don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!
By the way, today marks the second day of my November Home Organizing Challenge and I am overwhelmed at the number of you who have decided to take this challenge on! I’m super excited to see your results! If you haven’t downloaded the calendar yet, you can grab it here. The reason I started with this home organizing challenge before our Finance Organizing Challenge, which starts next month, is because, as people begin to organize their spaces, they begin to evaluate the choices they have made. In the decluttering process, you are able to physically see the finances that have been wasted on things you never used, or things you forgot about that expired or became useless because they were buried under all that clutter. Are you feeling guilty? Good. Now grieve a bit. Go on. It’s a good thing! We must mourn our mistakes and shortcomings, so we can finally decide to make a change for the better!
So, yes, 14 years ago, I looked at my credit report for the first time and also found out that there was $3000.00 worth of debt I didn’t even create. I paid it off anyway. The reasoning doesn’t matter but just that if anything might impact my daughter negatively, I like to make sure I do something about it and I didn’t want to have any money wasted on late fees and finance charges when I could be providing for her needs. So, around the same time I started gathering all the bills together, so I could wrap my head around it all, I got fired. I was working for a tax preparation company and during the off season I was helping with paralegal work and my boss asked me to pretty much plagiarize a conversation to change it up in his favor and I refused. Though that was the lowest of low points, I felt a peace from the Lord because I had done the right thing. It took an excruciating month of job hunting, knowing that these bills were still accruing finance charges, but I started working in accounting, and I learned how to use Microsoft Excel. I figured out how to pay that debt off as quickly as possible, got a second job as a hostess, and paid off all of that debt in four months. My daughter was just a toddler at the time and after four months of being tired of only seeing her for a few minutes in the morning and having just enough time for bath time and reading in the evening, with that debt paid off, I quit that second job.
The sight of all those late fees and finance charges just made me so sick to my stomach. So, I was determined to never be in debt again. The system I created during this season of my life is the same system I use to this day that has kept me out of debt even through the recession, a freeze on raises, recurring illness, disability, layoff, unemployment, a major pay cut, and quitting my last job to risk it all and begin my writing, blogging, and YouTube career. I’ve worked in Accounting for 13 years and, out of all the accounting programs, I’ve used and after evaluating the budgeting apps created in recent years, I haven’t found anything that works quite like the system I’ve created. My friends are shocked when I show them exactly how to pay off debt and see a solid date to being debt-free.
So, while I work on putting together sharing my system with you, for this introduction to Financial Transformation Thursday, I would like to know what you use to stay on top of your finances and how you budget out your income for your expenses. Do you use any budgeting apps, Microsoft Excel, pen and paper, the cash envelope system? What are your favorite things about these systems? What do you not like about these systems? Or you can even share if you don’t budget at all and if you want to start!
Don’t forget to grab my November Home Organizing Challenge because, remember, organizing and finances go hand in hand. I challenge you to evaluate what you haven’t been using and calculate how much the items you aren’t using actually cost you. It will be quite eye-opening! The organizing videos shall continue on Saturdays so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the notification bell, so you can know the moment my next video is up and never miss another organizing AND budgeting video.
Happy Organizing AND Budgeting!
Author of “How to Organize Any Space in 7 Simplified Steps“