OMFG this book is amazing! And Gail Vaz-Oxlade is my new hero! So many financial gurus are great at telling you what you need to do to get your finances in order. Gail goes one step further and shows you. Step by step with instructions that any idiot (namely me) can follow, Gail can help you turn your finances around.
Lately I have been feeling the pinch. The pinch of spending more than I make, living off credit too often, and watching my credit balances go continually upwards instead of down. I was playing a disastrous juggling game with my finances and my little house of cards finally came tumbling down. Enter Gail and her wonderful manual that will help you get Debt-Free Forever should you so choose. And baby I choose!!! I’m so very tired of playing the credit game and knowing if I should lose my job tomorrow, I would have very little savings to carry me over to the next job, and in this economy, there’s no guarantee the next job will be there before the money runs out.
So, I started with Gail’s first exercise: Track your spending. I gathered my financial papers together for the past 6 months and sat down, plunking the numbers into a most conveniently provided spreadsheet (you can change the categories, delete some or add more. It’s a great tool to get you started). OMG eye-opener! Was I really spending that much each month? No wonder I have debt. Sigh. Time to grow up, knuckle down, cut back, do whatever it is I need to do to get me out of this mess I’ve made for myself,
But before the budget is made and the cutting back begins, Gail takes you through a much needed exercise -- one I unfortunately skipped in my immediate need to polish up my spending habits, but that I have every intention of doing: Sit down and write out your dreams, what it is you truly want out of life and then make them your goals. Then, when you begin to budget and pay down debt and save and cut back on your fun spending money, you have a purpose for all this hard work (because let me tell you, I desperately want to just say “budget smudget” and do all the fun things I was doing before, but reality is, that behaviour if left unchecked will put me into the poor house faster than you can pronounce Gail’s last name!).
So I’m two weeks into a new budget, one I’m managing to stick to, because it’s based on realistic figures. Figures gathered from my 6-month spending tracker and advice from some incredibly supportive friends. I have a solid plan for paying off my consumer debt in three years or less, a plan I feel really good about, And I’m working on those goals – where I want to be, and what I want to accomplish 3, 5, 10 years from now, It’s not going to be easy. Gail doesn’t promise easy. But she does guarantee results, if you’re committed.
Should you embark on Gail’s plan, however, one word of caution which Gail herself addresses: Be prepared to find out who your true friends are. I certainly have, though not without much surprise, grief and disappointment. Well, Gail will not only help you shed your debt, but also the users and spongers in your life. And we can all do without users and spongers, am I right?
Gail is changing my life for the better, one penny at a time. Cheers Gail!
Till next time, happy reading!
L J
No comments:
Post a Comment