Last week I told you the story of how I came to hate debt. I have to be honest, though. Even though I hate debt…I was in it. I financed my Jeep (it’s now paid off), I financed my wife’s engagement ring (thankfully it was paid off before the wedding – just barely), and I financed a computer. The funny thing about that computer, though, was after we paid it off we ended up selling it because we needed money more than a computer…probably would have been smarter just to not buy it in the first place. Now we have a simple laptop (that I’m typing on currently) that we bought in cash and got a great deal on. Thankfully we were able to pay off all our debts except our mortgage in the last year. Check out some previous posts of mine for the full story.
Look, the point is this: debt is everywhere in our culture. Even those who earnestly try to avoid it can end up in it. I mean…I’ve actually got a tremendous amount of debt weighing me down right now. It’s called a mortgage. It’s a big, nasty, hairy monster that sits in the darkness threatening me every time I want to make a bold career choice. It’s got six big ol’ digits in it, too. But “you’ll always have a mortgage,” right? Wrong. My wife and I are currently on a plan to knock out that big hairy monster. A lot of people see a lot of debts as little monsters running around eating their money.
My goal is to take the fangs out of those monsters so they are much easier to fight. Your weapon of choice? Information. Over the next several weeks I’m going to be posting a series on debt that I call “Debt Destruction.” The goal isn’t to just reduce debt (which is what all the banks advertise – funny story the banks own ¾ of American consumer debt) but to completely eliminate debt from your life.
“But Heath, why should we get rid of our debt? Won’t that kill our credit scores?” Yes, little Timmy, it will kill your credit score. Which is a-okay in my book, because I don’t plan on borrowing money ever again. If you never borrow money, your credit score doesn’t matter.
“But Heath….” There’s going to be a lot of “but Heaths” that come up, and my goal is to address as many as I can. I know this is truly counter-cultural, and I like it that way. Listen, I believe what the Bible says, and Proverbs 22:7 puts it this way: “The rich rules over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.” Let’s break that down.
The rich rules over the poor. Well that’s kind of a given, right? I mean the leaders in every country are rich, right? Stop! Look at the full context. The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender. The rich rule over their slaves. The borrower is slave to the rich. These two statements go together. So who are the rich?
True fact: JP Morgan, Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and other credit-lending banks are all MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR companies.. Listen, I’m not talking that it’s a multi-billion dollar market. Those companies’ net worth are each over a hundred billion dollars. They’re the RICH.
When you sign up for a loan from those banks, you are the borrower. You owe them money. They are the rich who now rule your life because you owe them money. You are now their slave, because every bit of work you do gets sapped to pay them back for the money they loan you. And they’ll treat you like a slave too. Just be late or miss a payment. They punish you with fees. If you lose your job, they don’t care. They’ll still sue you for the money you owe them until you have to file bankruptcy. You become the slave of the rich, and allow them to rule over you when you borrow their money.
A lot of people see that as an extreme way of thinking. But my Bible says to “owe no man anything except to love one another. (Romans 13:8)” It also says in Proverbs 6 that if you find yourself in debt you are to “give no sleep to your eyelids and deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter.” If you’re in debt you have to WORK to get out of it. The Bible doesn’t just tell us to work, it tells us to not rest until it’s paid off, because the lender is the hunter coming after us. The only way to escape the slavery of debt is to RUN LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
And that’s what my wife and I are doing. We are running full on towards the goal of being 100% debt free. We knocked out the cars, the computers, and the doctor bills. Now we’re going to use our new money muscle to take on the big hairy monster that is our mortgage. And you know what? I think you can do it too. Are you tired of paying payments to the banks? Are you sick of their net worth being absurdly huge and yours being negative? THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter. RUN like your entire life’s earning depend on it, because your ENTIRE LIFE’S EARNINGS depend on it! Stop being a slave, stop letting the rich rule over you and gain freedom like you’ve never known before.
Join me on this journey as we break down and destroy the myths around debt and I’ll arm you with knowledge and truth to combat those monsters. You can do this. We can do this.
-Heath
Common Cents Personal Finance 