Getting out of Debt: Putting your foot down

Debt has a way of lingering, always for too long. So, if the debt is lingering how can we get out of it? What is the best method of getting out of debt?

There aren't any magic pills that make debt go away. If someone on a late-night TV ad or on the radio tells you they have the secret to eliminating your debt without any effort, they're lying. To start getting out of debt you have to do one simple thing: stop going into debt. It's crazy, I know!

I think about it like this: when I was a boy, I joked with my friends about "digging a hole to China." Imagine digging a hole - a big hole - so deep that you'd need a ladder to climb out of it...but you don't have a ladder. So you're stuck in your hole with a shovel. If you want to get out of that hole, obviously the first thing you're going to do is stop all that digging, right?

Proverbs 22:7 says "The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender." If you want to get out of debt, you must stop going into debt and allow for a paradigm shift in your way of thinking. Debt doesn't build the prosperity we've all been led to believe by our culture. When surveyed, 75% of the Forbes 400 (the 400 richest Americans) said they got there by becoming debt free. So, instead of putting the cart before the horse by talking about how to actually go about eliminating debt, we first have to change the way we think about debt altogether - otherwise, we'll wind up right back where started...in that hole.