This blog was started to support customers of The DebtFree Playbook, initially. Some of those people were writing about their experiences of debt and successes they were having. We hit some snags offline and ground to a halt, to start again this year, just 6 weeks ago. This time, although we still wanted to be in support of those people, we wanted to restrict the writing to just two of us. How quickly things change…

Ben has left, leaving me as the sole writer, for now. I have become quite passionate about the blog and really enjoy writing it. I wasn’t expecting to have to do it every day, though. Last week was a difficult week. I’ve had a tooth abscess and found it hard to concentrate. Even today, after treatment, it’s still in the process of settling down. So I went off to read some other blogs and see what would inspire me.

What I found in Ciaran’s writing was comfort. He doesn’t write every day. He talks about following your heart and finding your own frequency. Phew! Not being well and having to come up with posts was seriously worrying me. Our company is in a state of change at the moment. This is a very small part of what we do. Soon, some of the others will be able to join me in writing and we will go back to at least 5 posts per week.

Meanwhile, I’m excited about the direction this blog is taking. I’m really a teacher of personal development, leadership and entrepreneurship. I got myself out of a heap of debt and thought it would be fun and helpful to share what I learned on that journey, especially when debt is a problem for so many people. So that’s how I came to write The DebtFree Playbook and this blog.

In being who I am and following my heart, it’s becoming a place of personal development as a way out of debt with the odd practical tip. Hence the new strapline – As You Grow, Your Debt Shrinks!

Related posts

• Multiply Your Cash (1)
• Sucking Lemons (4)
• Making Money from Your Heart (7)
• …And We’re Off (0)
• Sharing Success (4)

I’m pleased to report Carnivals are Fun! Far from being exclusive, we have been warmly welcomed. Our articles have been in these carnivals;

Ben’s story about his daughter’s financial awakening and the dilemmas that brings, Should A Child Spend The Whole Dollar has appeared in The Carnival of Money Growth and Happiness at CreditCardLowdown and The Carnival Of Education, where it passed the teacher’s inspection! I thought that carnival might be only interesting for teachers, but how wrong I was. Stories range from how to use Obama’s speech as a teaching tool to the inspirational quotes of Henry “Fonz” Winkler.

Frugality Sucks got into The Carnival of Money Stories, one of my 3 favourite carnivals, this time beautifully hosted by The Financial Blogger. There were so many good posts to read there I spent the better part of the day reading them. I particularly liked They Want to Make Money Fast by Digerati Life and, the slightly naughty but deliciously funny Whoring Your Spouse Out For Fun and Profit from Punny Money.

Finally, Making Money From Your Heart got into the Money Hacks Carnival, another favourite, admirably hosted by MommyGetsPaid. I haven’t even had time to read most of the other posts yet.

Thanks to all the PF bloggers who make people new on the scene feel so welcome. Special thanks to Hank at MyInvestingBlog and Ana at DebtFREE-revolution who are models of success through generosity. What a great week!

Related posts

• No related posts.

I’ve been in debt, and I’ve seen a whole range of responses when I told people that I was struggling with my money issues. Looks of genuine surprise, disappointment, dismay, mild contempt, open hostility and even sneaking admiration…

I think people’s reactions said more about their own attitudes to money, than my inability to stay solvent at the time.

It’s certainly a subject that can raise people’s blood pressure very quickly. Some people get almost apopleptic when confronted by a story about someone in debt (heaven forbid they actually meet one in person!)

And the camps seems to be starkly divided, with one side seeing debtors as some sort of societal pariahs who can’t handle money; and the other side lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of the financial institutions who caused the problems in the first place by making all this credit available…

So who is it?

I don’t condone flagrant misuse of credit. I’ve done that and paid the penalties. (Many of them.) Yet I do struggle with equating one person’s personal debt, with the mismanagement of large amounts of funds on a corporate or governmental level that seem to go unnoticed or unheeded, and then quickly fade into another forgotten headline.

Equally, I don’t condemn personal debtors. I don’t know the circumstances by which they found themselves in debt. And before you come back with something like: “You can’t ‘find’ yourself in debt – you spend your way there.” Bear in mind there are circumstances that may incur a level of debt which may then be difficult to deal with – long-term unemployment, health issues, etc.

It’s easier to condemn the big financial institutions. Faceless corporations looking to satisfy the need for profit, regardless of the misery they might cause along the way. Case in point – the current issue of high bank charges in the UK.

I’ve never understood the reasoning behind charging someone a hefty fee (it used to be £25) if someone went even £5 overdrawn. I’m not sure it makes financial sense, does it? Isn’t it simply making it more likely that the customer will get into further financial difficulties? Are these charges fair and reasonable? I don’t think so.

Here’s another perspective:

Of course some bank charges are excessive, just as some junk food contains too many calories and too much alcohol makes you drunk. But if we want the right to be treated as autonomous adults living free of a nanny state, then we have responsibilities too.

I think the middle ground lies in taking responsibility. The financial institutions have to take a level of responsibility for the way they encourage the use of their products (debt instruments) and we have to take personal responsibility for our own financial education and financial decisions.

We also need to take a degree of responsibility for our emotional reactions to money and debt. Maybe someone in debt could use your experience or wisdom, rather than your scorn. Maybe if you’re telling someone about your debt, they might be encouraged to see you’re willing to take responsibility for it.

Related posts

• Making Money from Your Heart (7)
• Can you Cheat an Honest Man/Woman? (1)
• Worry – A Western Disease? (0)
• Unfair Help With Unfair Agreements? (9)
• UK Bank Charges Victory Gets Closer (0)

What is going on? Debt is becoming a bigger issue by the day. There are tent camps outside Los Angeles; banking ripples in New York; and Northern Rock (the bank involved in the sub-prime debacle, and recently nationalised by the UK Government to bail it out) is expecting to set new records in house repossessions this year…. I could go on.

Becoming debt free seems like a harder task each day. So we wanted to bring you a glimmer of hope.

We’ve been struggling online for a while now, trying to make sense of it all. Struggling with the overload of information and constant barrage of emails from so-called gurus promising the ‘next-big-thing’. Fed up with outsourcers letting us down.

Everything we tried seemed like hard work or expensive. And we were getting discouraged and tired of it all.

So we went back to basics. We teach entrepreneurship, yet we weren’t following our own golden rule:

“Do what makes your heart sing and the money will follow.”

Our passion is helping other people transform their lives. Pure and simple. We’ve been doing it offline for years. We finally got that we needed to do it online. So we started with The DebtFreePlaybook and more recently, with this blog. And it’s really working – to a degree that’s surprised even us!

This is how it happened for us:

We had downloaded The Authority Black Book a long time ago, but only got around to reading in February just gone. It inspired us and started to make sense of this whole “Social Web 2.0″ thing. It’s an incredibly valuable tool. And it’s FREE. We like free!

Then we heard that Jack Humphrey, the author of The Authority Black Book, was starting a membership site to teach people exactly how to take advantage of all the Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites.

We’re not very hot on structure, so a ready-made plan was what we really needed. At first, we thought it would be way too expensive. After all, most guru’s charge big bucks for their membership sites, and we’d been down that road before… But Jack charges less than $30 a month for his membership site.

In our first month, we started seeing results. And they just keep coming.

March was an incredible month for us. You can see that our traffic has soared, and we’ve even hit the front page of Google for a couple of our keywords. Have a look at these stats:

The best bit though, is that this work has genuinely become fun and we’ve made a lot of friends. Every day we can see results: more traffic, more friends, more links, more readers and, yes, more MONEY.

As well as the traffic, Heather’s been interviewed by DebtCC; we had a post in The Carnival of Kids and Money; and another in The Carnival of Money Stories, just today. The number of people who read the blog every day has multiplied by a factor of 4. All in one month!

So what has this got to do with you? Well, we hope you can start to see a glimmer of possibilities…

What are you passionate about? What do you care about or know about, that you start a blog or a site about? What are you passionate about, that you know other people are also interested in? How could access to Jack’s membership site boost the chances of your success? At least download The Authority Black Book to give you an insight into how all this can work for you… If you’re already publishing your own blog, then you’re one step ahead anyway.

And the final piece of news: You know we’re passionate about helping as many people as possible get out of debt…

Well, to celebrate our recent success, we’re slashing the cost of The DebtFree Playbook to an almost ridiculous level. It used to be $47.00 for US customers, and £25 for UK customers…

Now it’s going to be $19.95 for our US customers, and £9.95 for people in the UK!

If I were a guru, I might call that a no-brainer! And no, this is not a time-sensitive, limited-availability kind of a thing. It’s just a very fair price for a great product that can help you get out of debt – fast.

So go to The DebtFree Playbook site to pick up a copy for yourself. Then come back and tell us about your success online, or offline.

Related posts

• Making Money from Your Heart (7)
• Worry – A Western Disease? (0)
• Unfair Help With Unfair Agreements? (9)
• UK Bank Charges Victory Gets Closer (0)
• The New Taboo? (0)

He volunteered to go to Iraq.

Sloan, 26, a captain in the US Air Force, was stationed in Colorado Springs and could see a series of bad decisions in his financial life. So he decided to do something about it. In May he arrived for duty in Baghdad.

“I came to the realization that I was so far over my head, I had to do something drastic to increase my cash flow,” Captain Sloan said in a telephone call from the Green Zone, where he received extra pay and had minimal living expenses. “Iraq did that.”

In the US, coverage of debt issues is at an all-time high. And for good reason. “I hate to make it seem like I’m here just for money, because it’s not true,” he said. “There’s many worthy things about being here. But if I can use this to my advantage, I definitely should.”

Since arriving in Baghdad, he has managed to reduce his debt to less than $4,000. “I’ve met people who’ve gone on to one or more tours just to get out of debt, with jobs much more dangerous than mine,” Captain Sloan said. “One soldier in Afghanistan said, ‘That’s why I’m here, to get out of debt.’ ”

All his income is tax-free under the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion and he gets an extra $225 a month imminent danger pay and $100 “safe” pay to improve his living conditions. “The real benefit is that it’s tax-free money,” he said. “I really don’t feel in imminent danger on a day-to-day basis, but there have been times my heart did skip a beat or two.”

Apart from an occasional haircut, or dried fruit, he said, “every paycheck I get goes straight toward my debt.”

Financial counsellors working with military families say that volunteering for deployment to get out of debt is rare. But debt is a problem in the armed services, as it is in the country at large. In 2005, military charities for all branches of service provided over $87 million USD in emergency no-interest loans or grants to over 100,000 service personnel in financial distress.

Captain Sloan’s debts began at the Air Force Academy, with a low-interest loan of $25,000. “It was this awesome loan at 1 percent interest, and I just squandered it,” he said.

Captain Sloan borrowed another $35,000 last year to buy a 2005 Nissan 350Z, bringing his debt above $68,000. He was using one credit card to pay off another and considering a payday loan to meet his regular expenses. He also said he kept his debts hidden from most of his friends and relatives.

“When I look back, I feel somewhat ashamed that I got myself in this position,” he said. “But at the same time it was necessary for me to learn to manage my finances. When you can’t pay your monthly bills, you need to make some changes.”

He also sold things and simplified his life. He eats at the chow hall rather than Pizza Hut and uses a Sony Reader to scan free books on the Internet.

Changes, indeed. I have to applaud his courage to take such drastic measures. And I think that even for a military person, opting to go to a war-zone is a pretty daring move.

What are you prepared to do to get out of debt? Because action is so much more powerful than words alone…

Related posts

• Unsecured Consolidation Loans (2)
• The Ways We Get Into Debt (4)
• The New Taboo? (0)
• Sucking Lemons (4)
• Sharing Success (4)