One of my Air Force friend’s and I were talking the other day about summer solstice and the heating of the earth. We discussed how ironic it was that the longest day of the year was in June yet the hottest day typically comes in August. Likewise the shortest day is in December, yet the coldest comes in February.
With this same premise, he talked about how he used to do experiments about energy and momentum in science class. He said he found it odd, yet understandable that a bottle of hot water will freeze faster than a bottle of cold water if placed in the freezer at the same time. The reason this occurs is because of the increased energy and momentum the hot water has. (I need Jeremiah and Sarah to test this for me and report back on the comments.)
I think debt, and more particularly getting out of debt, works the same way. People like me with a large debt are able to get the momentum going and pass by those with smaller debts and less intensity. That I think partly explains why I think we can be out of debt in 48 months. It is all about momentum.
After doing this zero based bugeting and debt snowball I have some really good perspective on this whole debt thing.
I’ve been having this hankering for a new car. It’s personal weakness. I have an 01 tacoma that’s paid off and runs as good as the day I drove off with only 11 miles on it (now its at 100,588).
I went back and forth about getting something else becasue the trade in value is pretty good still on my car… but the wife, after looking at the debt snowball chart and money allocations, put the kybosh on that and helped me make up my mind NOT to do it and correctly apply my bonus to the debt snowball.
That and i really want to find another line of work, and that’s exceedingly hard to do if you continue to dig a debt hole.
Anyway, out of 60k in crappy debts (not including mortgage) after 7/15 13k of it will be paid off (since I started this in april), with the plan to have another 20k paid off by next febuary.
Thanks for the helpfull information you provided with your spreadsheets (really been a good tool)
Comment by Zintradi — June 23, 2007 @ 11:39 pm
That is awesome! You have some incredible momentum built up already! Glad to help!
Comment by Joel — June 24, 2007 @ 12:27 am
you are very correct about the momentum though…
we have this Trendwest membership (it was a stupid impulse buy, which is how they like it) It’s basically a membership to a network or resorts. You buy a certain amount of ‘credits’ to which buys you a certian amount of time in the network. We started out with 10,000 credits which cost 12k that they financed at 13%. I’m embarrased now that I look back at it, but hey we have used the membership quite a bit, so i don’t feel too bad. if you’re ever interested in getting one though, check ebay first, there’s a crap load of people trying to sell theirs off to get out of the payments.
Anyway every year since we bought the membership, they have called us to try to get us to add more credits. we’ve done it twice so that the balance has swelled to just under 20k.
The wife has been the culprit on wanting to add more each time and this last time I put my foot down and convinced her that it’s not a good idea as it could derail our plan to get out of debt…
The momentom of paying things off gave me the chudzpah to say no to her, and it gave her the strngth to say no to my desire for that new car.
Besides I have this eery connection to that truck… it has gotten me out of the worst jams 4×4ing. I think I would never forgive myself if I got rid of it.
Comment by Zintradi — June 24, 2007 @ 1:42 am