If, like many people, you’re currently in debt and trying to rebuild your financial security, you no doubt remember “the day“. The day you first looked around you and really took notice of just how much debt you had really accrued and what bad of shape you were in; the day you decided a change had to be made and started to do something about it. This is the story for most people who are in your situation.
So how does this happen? Why do so many people have to have the shocking experience of suddenly “waking up” and realizing what they’ve done to themselves. Creeping debt is an unfortunate problem because it subjects people to worse financial situations than necessary; for many of us, if we had only realized sooner what was going on, we could have done something about it before it got so bad.
Part of the problem is the feeling of helplessness. The first time you have to let a credit card payment slide, you probably feel somewhat badly about it. The second and third time, however, you may not even notice at all. And once you start letting utility payments and car payments slide, forget about it – it’s not difficult at all at this point.
Of course, rational people recognize that their behavior has consequences. But think about it this way. Do you sit around during an average day obsessing over all the bad things you’ve done in life and wondering what you can do to make up for them, or do you try to push such thoughts aside so that you can more easily cope with the day to day demands of life and society? This is the case for financial problems as well.
The truth is that most people are aware to some extent of the trouble they’re getting themselves into, but they feel there’s little they can do. After all, if they had the money on hand to make the problems go away, they’d be paying their bills in the first place. Since they don’t, why worry about it?
The problem, of course, is that such an attitude just makes the issue worse. Ignoring your creeping debt isn’t going to make the problem go away – it’s only going to make it worse when one day you finally do wake up and realize the damage that has been done to your financial credibility.
That said, what can you do to stop the problem in its tracks? First of all, recognize that interest is the debt holder’s worst enemy – the longer you wait to pay off your debts in full, the more interest you’re going to pay. Many people get to the situation where they’re only paying interest each month, and never the principal amount; that’s literally a situation that will NEVER end!
In this case, consider what debt consolidation can offer you. Before your debt gets out of hand, consider talking to your lenders about the process of debt consolidation – reducing all your debts into a single monthly payment. You may still end up paying interest, but this time it’s on one account, not half a dozen, which is much more manageable. Moreover, taking a proactive step like this one can help to force your debt situation into conscious awareness so that you can take control of it before it takes control of the rest of your life. Now’s the time to wake up!
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