{"id":140,"date":"2010-04-13T01:57:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T01:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myfinancialfocus.net\/mainsite\/?p=140"},"modified":"2025-08-24T06:39:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T10:39:17","slug":"is-your-debt-dropping-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myfinancialfocus.net\/mainsite\/index.php\/is-your-debt-dropping-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Your Debt Dropping Too?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good news on CNNMoney.com yesterday.\u00a0 Consumer debt is on its way down!\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 According to the report, this is the 6<sup>th<\/sup> consecutive month that the total amount of debt has decreased. This month the amount exceeded expectations and was down $21.6 billion dollars!<\/p>\n<p>That is great news, but we have a long way to go.\u00a0 The new total amount of consumer debt is around $2.47 trillion dollars.\u00a0 Wow, how do we really start shaving that off?\u00a0 More importantly, how did we ever get there?<\/p>\n<p>The getting there part was easy.\u00a0 We lived beyond our means.\u00a0 Credit in the forms of credit cards, extended payment plans, home equity lines and the like have allowed us to aggressively rack up the amount that we owe.<\/p>\n<p>That same availability of credit has allowed us to purchase things that we could not afford and more of it more often.\u00a0 Yes, I did say more than we could afford. If we could have afforded it there was no need for borrow for it.<\/p>\n<p>Today, as things get tight, it becomes more difficult to keep up the payments and is some cases we can not continue them.<\/p>\n<p>What can you do?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get on      an aggressive debt reduction diet.<\/li>\n<li>Cut up      all plastic forms of debt<\/li>\n<li>Pay      off and close all available forms of credit.<\/li>\n<li>Live      on less than you make<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Be careful using debit cards.\u00a0 In a related story this morning, the New York Times shows how people are being hit with big charges for exceeding their checking balance using a debit card.\u00a0 In one example, a $4.14 cup of coffee at Starbucks (see why I call them Fourbucks) wound up costing $38.14 after the bank fee.<\/p>\n<p>Questions \u2013 what are you doing to pay down your debt owed?\u00a0 How are you managing without a credit card?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good news on CNNMoney.com yesterday.\u00a0 Consumer debt is on its way down!\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 According to the report, this is the 6th consecutive month that the total amount of debt has decreased. This month the amount exceeded expectations and was down $21.6 billion dollars! That is great news, but we have a long way to go.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coaching","category-debt"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is Your Debt Dropping Too? - Financial Focus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myfinancialfocus.net\/mainsite\/index.php\/is-your-debt-dropping-too\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Your Debt Dropping Too? - Financial Focus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Good news on CNNMoney.com yesterday.\u00a0 Consumer debt is on its way down!\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 According to the report, this is the 6th consecutive month that the total amount of debt has decreased. 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