Beating Broke

Have You Become Complacent with Your Gazelle Intensity?

May 23, 2012 By MelissaB 16 Comments

If you have tens of thousands of dollars to pay off, gazelle intensity can be exhausting. You can easily begin to feel sorry for yourself and lament all of the things you have to give up and sacrifice when paying down debt.

We started our journey to be debt free on October 20, 2011. Our debt was a mind-numbing $57,966.01. In the 7 months since then, we have paid down almost $10,000. (We are sitting right around $48,000 now.) I am proud of our progress, but we have reached the point where the journey is getting long and difficult. Gazelle intensity has lost its luster.

Mhorr Gazelle (Nanger dama mhorr) © by 5of7

While we have no intentions of adding any new debt, we sometimes want to slow down and enjoy life. I don’t want to work so hard all the time; I want to spend money on treats sometimes.

And just like that it happened. The lifestyle creep began. We had been not been spending any money on eating out, and in May we spent nearly $200. Yes, I don’t think that seems like gazelle intensity either.

My kick in the pants came when I read on Yahoo! that Joe Mihalic recently paid down $90,000 in student loan debts in 7 months. Seven months! That is nearly $13,000 a month. Intrigued, I read more about his story on The Huffington Post.

After he did the obvious measures of selling off his extra vehicle, his motorcycle and cashing in investments and savings, he went renegade and cashed in his $8,000 retirement. (We certainly have enough in our retirement to erase our debt, but I am not as young as Joe, and I wouldn’t be willing to pay the penalties. Most financial experts do NOT recommend wiping out your retirement to pay down debts.)

Then he made the hard sacrifices including:

Not having dinner dates the entire time he was paying down his debt (opting instead to take dates out for coffee and bagels)
Foregoing travel at Christmas to see his parents
Missing two friends’ weddings
Finding two roommates on Craigslist
Starting a side business as a landscaper
Not buying any new clothes
Shunning consumerism in general

He was full force gazelle intense, and it paid off. He, as Dave Ramsey says, “lived like no one else so later he could live like no one else.”

While we are generally frugal, we slip up and spend too much money on groceries and other expenses (such as our unnecessary trips out to restaurants this month). There is still some fat in the budget, and that fat can be cut and funneled toward our debt repayment. We still have room to improve.

Sometimes when you are tired and are immersed in your debt repayment, getting out of debt can feel hopeless. You can feel like the debt will never go away, and you can start to doubt yourself and the sacrifices you are making. In times of doubt, read stories like Mihalic’s to see that gazelle intensity does work. He made it through to the other side. You can, too.

Are You Rationalizing Your Way Into Debt?

May 16, 2012 By Shane Ede 18 Comments

Staying out of debt is difficult. Terribly difficult. It isn’t made any easier if you rationalize yourself into debt, either. Many of us spend a good deal of our time and energy trying to get out of debt, and stay out of debt. We do that through so many devices, and each have our own system that helps us along the way. Budgeting is obviously a big tool that many of us use to make sure that we have enough money to pay the bills, and ourselves at the end of the month. We figure out how many months it will take to pay off this debt, or that debt, and then budget out that amount over that many months.

Many years ago, I spent a few years working as a salesperson at a retail store where bigger ticket items were popular. Computers, televisions, and cell phones were big sellers, and good for commissions. As part of our training for our jobs, we were trained on the many ways to sell a customer on the item they were looking at, and even how to convince the customer that they needed the upgraded item. One of those sales tactics was to help them rationalize the purchase. And, chief among the ways to do that was to take the price of the item, break it up over a set amount of months (24, 36, 48, 60) and tell them how much they’d be spending “a month” for the item. Suddenly, that $2000 computer (it was that long ago) becomes a $25 a month purchase. Psychologically, people are more likely to purchase something if it’s under $100. Even if that “under $100” is in the form of a monthly payment for several years.

Salespeople are the only ones we have to watch out for when it comes to this tactic in particular. Pay special attention the next time you’re looking at purchasing something. See how many times over the next month, you attempt to rationalize a purchase based on what it will cost per month on credit over what the total price will be. I think you’ll be surprised just how often you use that same sales tactic on yourself.

Don’t rationalize your way into debt. Fight back, and stick to your guns. That purchase has a total price. And if you’re buying it on credit, that price will be far larger than if you had purchased it with cash. More importantly, don’t saddle yourself with more debt just because the “monthly” price is more palatable.

The Work Revolution

May 7, 2012 By Shane Ede 6 Comments

The Work Revolution

By: Dr. Julie Clow

There are so many gurus and life coaches out there that are telling everyone that they can that the only way to truly be happy with work, is to leave work, and get on an entrepreneurial journey. There’s books, seminars, and more than enough websites that are dedicated to helping you find a way to escape the daily grind that is your work. Dr. Clow thinks there’s a better way to go about it. In The Work Revolution, Dr. Clow lays down the argument that it isn’t that you need to find an escape from work, but that work as we know it is in need of a revolution.

The 9-5 workday has it’s roots deep in the factories and assembly lines of the industrial revolution. Dr. Clow posits that we are deep into the throws of a new revolution. An information revolution. No longer are we constrained by the physical localities that we work, and often find ourselves working with others within our company that are in entirely different timezones, and even different continents, than we are. Work needs to change, she says, and we have to help it.

Of course, the book isn’t all about just the hours we work. And, it’s not just about what we as the employees and workers can do to change work. Each of the sections has a dedicated section for employers and leaders on how they too can help change the way we work, and make our companies better.

If you aren’t ready to make the jump to self-employment and entrepreneurship, or just don’t want to, but aren’t satisfied with the work environment that you are in, take the time to read this book. It’s full of lots of information and new ideas on how work can be given a push in the right direction towards change.

On a more personal note, it’s interesting to me that I ended up with this book for review at almost the exact same time that I was making a decision on returning to the workforce. Many of the points that Dr. Clow makes on how work is broken, and how companies are dysfunctional stuck out to me as things that I had become unhappy with in my old job. At the same time, I saw many of the things that she suggests as ways to make a move towards a work revolution that were already happening at what would become my new job. Just that fact alone has made me much more comfortable with making the decision to take the job. Proof positive that The Work Revolution is a good book to read even if you’re currently looking for a job!