Debt Proof Living
Monday, February 21st, 2011Debt Proof Living (DPL) is an online financial community that was started by Mary Hunt, a former spend thrift that was once in $100,000 of unsecured debt. According to the website the Debt Proof Living plan “puts you in charge of your money, allows you to live below your means, and offers a simple approach to saving, giving and paying off debt.” The plan claims to help members improve their credit score, give financial information, tips and advice, offer 24 hours per day, 7 days per week personal guidance from members, and give emergency preparedness advice. The plan claims it can work for any income level and financial situation, but membership is not free.
5 Component Plan:
The DPL plan consists of 5 basic steps:
Save 10% of your income. Give 10% of your income to a charity of your choice. Live on the remaining 80%.
Spending goals- DPL will help you devise a structured plan to organize spending.
Hardship fund-to help with unforeseen financial situations such as job loss.
Quickly pay off debt
“Freedom Account” – how to build an emergency fund to help with the unexpected.
Membership Requirements
Although you can search the DPL site for Mary’s “Tip of the Day”, the Everyday Cheapskate column, Mary’s “Thought of the Day”, reader stories and access to Mary Hunt’s blog: Money Rules Debt Stinks, the bulk of the site, including the forums, is reserved for paying members:
6 Month online membership $18 includes:
Full website access
Member features
12 month online membership $29 includes:
Everything in 6 month membership plus:
Articles resources and advice
16 page advertisement free DPL Newsletter
Freedom Account Manager
Interactive and Rapid Debt Repayment calculators
20% discount on Mary’s books including Debt Proof Living, Live your life for
Build Wealth While Trading Your Way Out Of Debt
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Has your plan to build wealth been hindered because of your debt? Would reducing your debt help you to better focus on building and maintaining your wealth? Most people focus on reducing debt and then building wealth. I will show you how to do both at the same time. Debt reduction is never easy. If it were, everyone would be debt-free. Debt reduction gives you time and money freedom. As a favor to your family, friends and your future, resolve to become debt-free once and for all.
Start with writing down the goal of being free from debt. This critical component often gets overlooked because of its simplicity. Until you write down your goal it is just a dream. The moment you write down your goal it comes alive. Just like a baby you have to feed this goal. The feeding begins with believing that your goal of debt freedom will be reached. I make it a point to verbally state my goals twice a day, in the morning and just before going to bed. This helps fuel my belief system.
While I am sleep I often dream of ways to reach my goals easier than I ever thought before. I awake the next morning rushing to write down what I have just dreamt so I can take full advantage of the situation.
Most people get caught up in not having a plan to reduce their debt. If you do not know how to go about reducing your debt, do not worry about that right now, just decide that you will do what is necessary to get your debt down. Keep this goal in front of you and you will start to attract the people, ideas and resources needed to reach your goal. When I teach people to build wealth through commodity trading; one of the first ideas I introduce them to, is having a goal of making enough profits to pay at least one bill each month. Imagine if you made enough supplemental money to pay one of your bills each month. This frees of money from your paycheck to begin paying down your debt.
Once you have paid off one bill use that same money and apply it towards paying off another bill. While you are paying off your bills increase your goals in your commodity trading by using strategies to pay two, three or four bills each month with your profits.
Now you are paying down debt while increasing your profits through commodity trading. This is where it really gets fun because as you pay down your debt using profits from trading; you can use money from your paycheck that you no longer have to use for bills, to take a vacation or whatever else you want as long as you do not finance it. Make sure you can pay cash for it. This gets you in the habit of paying cash for what you desire. Believe me this will feel so good!
Experts tell us that many diseases in the body come from financial stress! Imagine if your money worries were laid to rest. You would get sick less because the stress and discomfort of money woes would not be around any longer. Decide now to trade your way out of debt.
In previous articles I discussed a specific wealth building strategy to earn over $5,000. The strategy earned $6,400 to be exact if you followed my recommendation to the letter. I said to invest in Gold on its way to 850.
I said to use profits to pick up a second contract at 834. The use of this multiplying technique is how fortunes are made very quickly. This provides for debt reduction as well. If you recall I said to exit Gold completely once it reached 849 because many people would be trying to exit once it reached 850. To date Gold has not yet reached 850 and taken out the all-time high. Gold went from 800 to 849.50 per ounce.
By: David D. Wells
Financial Freedom Is Not Just About Being Debt Free
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Financial freedom is a bit of a misnomer. Having financial freedom is defined as being in a place in your life where you no longer have to work to pay for your living expenses. To me, having financial freedom is more about time than money. What could be better than having the time to do what you want without having to work?
That said, many people seem to confuse being financially free with being debt free. Debt has very little to do with financial freedom. If your income is enough to cover it without you having to work, you are financially free. Even if you have $5,000 a month in credit card payments, if you have the money to pay them and you don’t have to work for it, you have financial freedom.
Of course, being debt free can be an integral step in achieving financial freedom since the less debt you have, the less your living expenses are from month to month and the less you income you will to achieve financial freedom. It is definitely recommended that you attempt to pay off all your debts. But paying it off is just one of the first steps in a journey towards financial freedom.
Saving money is also a big part of financial freedom. I recommend having a savings account that is for emergencies only and is easy accessible in case you need to withdraw money. Start with a small amount, maybe $500 or $1000, just in case your car breaks down or, like me, your stove decides to catch fire and explode one day. Don’t worry too much about the interest rate on this account since its purpose is not to make you money.
Next you should have a savings account that is hard to withdraw from, like an automatic deposit savings account that gets a predetermined amount from your paycheck every payday and is invested in a mutual fund or other low-risk investment. The annual gain can be pretty good with this type of investment and it is more difficult to withdraw money from them than your local bank savings account.
Once your savings accounts are set up, and you are focusing on paying as much debt off each month as possible, you need to begin thinking about increasing your income. This is the step that most people overlook in their quest for debt and financial freedom, but it is the most important.
In order to stop working and still earn enough money to pay your living expenses, you need to find a way to get income without working. The two main ways of doing this is through investments and through passive income. There’s also inheritance and winning the lottery, but I wouldn’t stake my financial future on either of those.
Investing is tricky when talking about getting enough of a return to live on. Real estate can be a good investment, especially with rental income, for producing cash flow but as with all forms of investments it is at the whim of the market. Plus, despite what all those ‘no money down real estate deals’ books tell you, you need good credit or a lot of money (or both) to seriously invest in real estate.
Creating a passive income is a more likely way to become financially free than investing, at least for the short term. Internet niche marketing is currently the easiest and most profitable way online to make a passive income without having to invest a whole lot of money. In fact, it is possible to make money through niche marketing without spending any money at all through sites like Squidoo and Hubpages but it is easier and more profitable to build individual niche sites with a targeted domain name.
Don’t be fooled though, although it is easy enough to learn, Internet marketing takes hard work and a lot of time invested into it. Building a website that will bring in targeted readers who are willing to spend their money is quite a task and building trust takes time. You will not get rich overnight but, if you put in the time and effort, you will be able to achieve financial freedom from niche marketing in the future.
By: Jennifer Carpenter
