Stop digging

The issue with debt is that problems tend to pile up very fast. One financial mistake or spell of bad luck, which always happens to people who're in debt, and soon there is an even deeper hole. The great phrase, if you are in a hole, stop digging, applies perfectly to those who are borrowing.

To get a sense of how deep the hole is, look at the pile of paperwork on your desk or behind the sofa. Hiding the pile does not make it go away. That doesn't mean I didn't try.

You can manage your debt without living below your normal income. Even though many financial gurus recommend it, living on a budget is living below your means. Not having the coffee you like in the morning or giving up the newspaper on the train, never mind the bigger things is living below your means.

If you are managing your debt and not cutting back on your life you are not in a hole. If your debt is forcing you to live a life below what you want then you are.

Living below your means might work for a while, but in my experience the real way to get out of debt is stopping borrowing putting my needs above my old debts. This is how I want to continue to live and have a life. As long as I never take out any more unsecured debt, this will happen.

So I might as well try and learn to live now, rather than wait until I get the debt cleared at some vague time in the future.

The challenge is not paying off debt, it's learning to live without borrowing.

But surely all I need is a little self-control and the ability to delay gratification? This is the beginning to changing how I think about debt. Instead of saying, “I need more credit,” start saying, “I won’t take out any more debt.”

Debt isn’t my problem, but learning to live without using it is. Someone who does not smoke does not see cigarettes as their problem. So as I don’t use borrowing as a way of life, debt is not my problem.

I needed to change my perspective on so many aspects of my life. The main one was figuring out what I actually wanted from life. This was so overwhelming that I just got on with minute by minute decisions throughout my day. Sometimes it was to leave work, sometimes it was to go and sometimes to leave the country.

Once I found out how challenging it was to live without the drama and just live on what I earned, I could start planning. The debt got paid off in tiny amounts, but it did get paid off.

Meanwhile I had got better at living my life with what I had. Strangely enough, the better I got at living without debt, the more money I had. My life became about having what I wanted. Strange that?

Am sure some of you reading this will think this is not rocket science. Well to me it was. I had to go right back to basics, even before basics, and start again. I had to begin with writing everything down.