"Fiscal Fowl Alignment for the Potential Homesteader - Five Tips to Get your Financial Ducks in a Row" by Andrew Mueller page 1

If you’re like me, you’ve spent years wanting out of the rat race. You dream of a homestead where you can live without owning a necktie, free of the confines of your Dilbert-cubicle. You want to cut loose from the cutthroat bankers and credit card companies, the corporate ladder-climbing, and the MTV entertainment culture. Yet, you feel stuck. You’ve got a mortgage and credit card bills up the wazzoo. Every week you work 50-plus hours, then you spend every penny you make just paying the bills so you can start over again next week. There’s nothing left over to pay for your dream homestead.

I was in that spot, too, and not that long ago. Despite being an accountant by trade and having some clue about money and personal finance, I was on a financial merry-go-round. My wife and I made a pretty decent living. A little cottage on some land somewhere should have been within our means. That is, if we hadn’t managed to rack up a sizeable chunk of high-interest credit card debt to go along with two car payments, a mortgage, and hefty utility bills. Then there were the cable bills and cell phone bills and grocery bills, and all the other bills. Despite decent wages, there always seemed to be too much month left over at the end of our money. Buying land, creating a homestead, and leaving our corporate jobs looked about as realistic as flapping our arms and flying to Venus.

It hasn’t been quick or easy, but we’re now on the verge of making the break. Over the last five years, we’ve managed to get rid of most of our debt (the last little bit will be gone this year), and we’ve managed to buy 10 acres of lovely Ozark woodsland, free and clear. Construction on the barn and the cottage is set to begin as soon as the last of the debt is paid off.

How did we do it? How can YOU do it? Well, everybody’s situation is a little different, but here are five basic things to that apply to everybody.

TIP #1 - START TODAY

Lao Tzu is the ancient philosopher who said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.'" Working toward your dream can start right now, from where you are standing, with just one step. In fact, it can start no other way. No one has what they consider to be a perfect financial life. Few people come even close. But while some will idly dream of their futures, you can be doing the job of a making yours happen. Slowly work your way toward your goals, getting closer every single day. Take that first step today, and then learn to enjoy the journey. That’s what life is, after all.

TIP #2 – FOCUS ON GETTING OUT OF DEBT

Note: Debt reduction strategies could make up an entire article of their own, so I’m only going to touch on some concepts here. The devil is always in the details, so you will want to obtain more detailed information before you make any bold moves in this regard.

Consumer debt – which is debt on things like credit cards, boat loans, car loans, or cash advances – is a dream crusher. It keeps you paying new money on old things that you don’t even own any more. It allows you to satisfy small wants today, but only in exchange for crushing your big dreams of tomorrow.

The $20 pizza you tacked onto the balance of your credit card? If you make minimum payments, it’s going take you fifteen to twenty years to pay off, at a cost of over $100. How can you possibly pay for your dreams if you are: a) paying $100 for a $20 pizza, and; b) still paying today, for a pizza that you ate ten years ago? The answer is that you can’t. Like a financial version of the Terminator, you must work to ruthlessly eliminate your debt.

The good news is: there is a simple formula for getting out of debt. The bad news is that it’s just like the simple formula for weight loss. That is to say, it’s not going to be what you want to hear. I need you to get this part however, because it’s important.

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