There are numerous holidays, events, and other reasons to celebrate throughout the year. But for someone in debt, mobilizing multiple areas of your life towards debt reduction efforts will quickly accelerate you into better financial health.
To maximize the value of each event, tie it to a debt milestone. Better yet, set your debt milestones to correspond with holidays and other festive events in your schedule and use those moments to savor the small victories in your quest towards debt elimination. You can even combine party themes, using events to simultaneously celebrate the achievement of one goal and the initiation of the next step.
Use events to mention in passing to friends and family of your achievement. In short, get your social scene involved in your completed milestone. They can serve as valuable coaches, in big and small ways, as you move on to the next step in your debt plan.
Review your debt plan and adjust it for new financial circumstances. Make the first thing you do the morning after the celebration be to sit down and review the debt plan on paper. Don’t have a debt plan in place yet? Use this time to write down, formulate, and commit to a debt elimination plan, no matter how basic or complex. This is an excellent moment in which to go over any changes in your job status, salary, housing or other income/debt information and make necessary adjustments to your debt reduction schedule. Receive a bonus or salary increase at work? Experience new reduced transportation costs because of declining gas prices? Revise upwards the amount you contribute each month in debt reduction payments. Input these new realities into your debt plan and reap the rewards of debt elimination faster than anticipated.
Raj Patel writes for DebtGoal.com, a do-it-yourself system for getting out of debt and lowering your interest costs. DebtGoal.com incorporates all of the techniques discussed in this post and can help users understand and get visibility to and manage their debt finances.
Tags: celebrations, cost savings, debt, debt celebration, debt elimination, debt milestone, Debt Paydown, debt plan, debt plan revision, debt reduction, debt savings, events, holidays, parties
