Debt Consolidation Vancouver

There’s plenty of personal finance advice out there, but oftentimes some of the most basic steps toward financial freedom are overlooked. For me, becoming a frugal person didn’t happen overnight. It was a process of discovering strategies that helped me save for the important stuff and avoid impulse buys. Here’s a simplified version of the steps I took. Maybe some of them will help you.

• Avoid credit cards that don’t allow you to pay off your purchases immediately. Credit cards are important part of building a credit history, but you don’t need to accumulate balances to use them. Many store credit cards allow you to make a purchase and then pay off your balance immediately.

• Create separate accounts for important payments and purchases. Setting up separate accounts for travel or car payments or new technology helps keep you from dipping into your savings during your everyday routine. It also allows you to see the progress you’ve made toward your goal.

• Think before you spend. Do you spend a lot of money on a cable TV package you hardly use when you could be watching your favorite shows online or on Netflix? Do you pay for a long distance calling plan when you could be using a calling card? It’s important to think about every spending decision you make, knowing that spending in one place means giving up something else.

• Squirrel something away. If you can accumulate a small amount and put it into an interest-earning certificate of deposit or another investment vehicle, even if it’s only for a short time, you’ll see your money grow and feel good about making even more frugal choices.

• Buy in bulk. If you have the space to store large bottles of catsup and other staples, you can save a lot of money by shopping at discount stores that sell larger-quantity items.

There are a lot of other money-saving strategies I’ve adopted, such as driving slower to save on gas, but the ones I’ve listed here are key when you’re just starting to figure out how to live a better and more sustainable financial life. I hope they’re helpful to someone.

Well hello again. It’s me Julia, your friendly storyteller and fellow debtor. If you have been following my story, you know that by the fall of 2009 I was seriously floundering.

Let’s quickly review my situation for those who weren’t paying attention:

I was unable to find work in my field of study, Education.

I applied and received a credit card to pay for my bills and rent.

I found a job as a waitress to pay for my rent and the minimal payment on my card.

Student loan repayment had me paying another $357 a month until I got it reduced to $187.

I found a position inside a school, but fortunately it was only volunteer. Income tax can be a killer.

To get back and forth to my non-paying job I bought a car. Correction; I agreed to start making payments on a car.

Now let’s add up those monthly totals:

Credit card min. payment: $110

Student Loan: $187

Car payment: $263

Rent: $720

Subtotal: $1280

Lets add to that my other major expenditures:

Groceries: $375 (roughly)

Cigarettes: $120

Gas: $60

Subtotal: 555

Grand Total: 1835

Ouch. And I was barely making $2,000 a month. Paying the bills, but only when I could. I prayed for an easier way, a path of less resistance. It came, finally, but not before I added another debtor to my list…

The List

All right my followers, it’s a new year, a new beginning, time to get your life in order. Trust me, once you do these few simple things, you will feel so much better about your daily routine.

The first thing you need to do is organize. Forget the money issues for a sec and take the time to clean up your living area. Clean the bathroom, the kitchen, the closet; especially the closet. Throw out any old clothes you don’t think you will wear again. Next, do your car. Get rid of all that junk you’ve been lugging around.

All right, now back in the house.

Next is your purse/backpack/wallet. If you are one of those people who likes to collect receipts (which is great!), find a shoebox and store them away. You don’t need those little paper reminders in your back pocket. Then take your key ring and remove any key that you don’t use on a regular basis. Do the same with your cards, pens, and cell phone adapters; anything that you might be carrying with you that is of little or no use discard.

"The Things We Carried"

Now go for a walk.

Back already?

Feel better?

Do you know what you just did? You consolidated. Now, it is a little trickier with your finances. That’s where Full Circle Debt Consolidation can help. Their expert credit team can help you minimize the bills that reach you. Your only concern will be one simple sum that will arrive once a month.

Apply for a Full Circle consultation right now and feel the weight lifted within days.

It’s not bad being a single guy in this town. Vancouver is the ultimate cultural and culinary melting pot, which means beautiful women everywhere and plenty of amazing restaurants to take them out to. When I started working at the accounting firm, and stopped being a broke college student, I took full advantage of what our wonderful city had to offer. But now that I’m job-less, broke (yet again), and in debt (no less), it’s back to Subway and ESPN companionship.

Every lonely night I spend sitting on my couch, eating store-brand popcorn and throwing back Colts is depressing. The only way I get through it is by reminding myself over and over again that I have to save money, and get rid of my debt, if I ever want to get my business off the ground.

This past Sunday, Mark and I were sitting in the kitchen after a particularly festive brunch, relaxing and enjoying our lazy Sunday. The kids were in the den, watching their cartoons, and we were sipping on our coffee, and flipping through the pages of the Sun. I was doing some serious newspaper reading (Dilbert, my ultimate guilty pleasure!), when Mark said to me, in a voice that he reserved for emotional or confessional moments, “Scar, I’m proud of us”.

This got me to thinking… We’re finally out of the woods with debt thanks to my rehabbed spending habits and our debt management consultant at Full Circle, and we’re finally making progress on the kids’ college funds. People are even asking me (me!) for financial advice. 4 years ago, I would have never guessed we’d be this far along.

So, dear readers, I think it’s time to say goodbye…As sad as I am about it, and as much as I love sharing my debt stories with you, I’m excited. Excited about my newfound financial responsibility and all the freedom that comes it. I can’t  wait to spend time with my family, without the stress of thinking about interest rates, and bills. So thanks for hearing me out, and good luck to you on your road to financial freedom!

1. Don’t open up a credit card account just because they offer you a discount. It’s too hard to keep track of multiple accounts and you’ll end up racking up the bills.
2. Ignoring the pile of bills on your desk will NOT make them go away. The only thing that will go away is your credit and the only thing you will gain is debt (at a high interest rate!).
3. Your kids do not need to wear designer duds. Not only do they not appreciate it, kids are cute no matter what brand they’re wearing.
4. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on decorating your home. Nobody will notice it if your house is a mess.
5. Managing your debt is a full time job – unless, of course, you’ve got Full Circle and their team of licensed debt management consultants by your side.

Mark’s always been the responsible one. And when we first met, he seemed to have it all together – spacious apartment, nice (aka functioning) car, and a stable job that was going somewhere. Once I got to know him, it became very apparent to both of us how different we were when it came to money management. Where Mark was diligent about paying his bills, I was getting late fees and overdrafts. Where Mark only had only one credit card, I had five. Needless to say, he was pretty much free of debt while I was swimming in it. The poor guy, he always had to foot the bill whenever we did something nice, or for that matter, whenever dined at an establishment posher than Pita Pit.

But when Mark lost his job, everything else seemed to unravel along with his career, including his good habits. Instead of opening his bills as soon as he got them, Mark would let them pile up on the desk. So much so that his tower of bills started to compete with my own. Pretty soon, he was swimming right along with me in our ocean of debt.

Our saving grace came when my sister suggested we call Full Circle Debt Solutions. I was skeptical, but at her insistence we gave them a call. I got connected right away to one of their credited debt management consultants who outlined a debt consolidation plan specifically for our situation. Miraculously, he minimized our payments to one so we wouldn’t have to worry about paying so many creditors at the end of the month. I guess it just goes to show that even the best of us can get into money trouble, and only the best can get us out.

I’m sick of paying bills. I know it’s all part of being an adult an all, but sometimes I wish I could go back to my sandbox days. Sure, I wouldn’t have a car to drive, credit card to use, or cell to text with, but I’d be totally debt free. (And I’m sure my mailman wouldn’t mind.)

But seriously, how nice would it be if the biggest worry in your life were the guest list at your next play date? Instead, I have to worry about how I’m going to make my next mortgage payment and how I’ll pay for my car insurance.

The only consolation I have is that I’ve got Full Circle Debt on my side. Thanks to my debt consolidation consultant, life doesn’t feel like all work, no play.

There I was, working at a call centre with these other half-wits and misfits.

It turned out my set design education was only good for that – set design. And seeing how I hated all the nonsense that surrounded the career that I loved, here I was, back at Square One.

There was one major difference though. After art school, and trying to fit in, and borrowing against my credit card to make ends meet on minimum wage – I was more in debt that I had ever been in my whole life. When I realized that my minimum payment on my credit card was $100. And none of that – not one cent – was going towards the principle, I knew I was in big trouble.

I wasn’t about to ask my parents for money. They had just moved and they were in no position to raise their baby daughter all over again. If nothing else, they had faith in me, so I had to tough it out.

I had faith.

I saw sets in everything I did. I’d look across the cubicles and picture ways in my mind as to how to redesign them to catch a more elegant slant of the mid-day sun from the north-facing window. I’d envision managers in bowler caps and zut suits and my co-workers with bar codes for faces, mindlessly droning on into black phones about relentless, inane crap I could care less about.

It was a rotten job. So I started waitressing again, as well. I was living with my grandma now. And I couldn’t feel any worse about myself. I was in debt. I saw myself as a failure as an artist. And I was waitressing, again, after all this time and vision and passion and hurt – and every month my Visa hit me with a tax that meant nothing but ownership. I was now a slave to debt – and at $100/night in tips, and $12/hour at the call centre, there was no way – ever –that I would crawl out of this hole.

I needed a better job. I needed a way to earn twice what I was earning.

Debt was killing me.