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Budgeting, Saving & Becoming Debt-Free Requires Deep Changes
You see the advertisements in newspapers, on TV, and on the Internet. You hear them on the radio. You get fliers in the mail. You may even get calls from telemarketers offering credit repair services.
They all make the same claims:
* Credit problems? No problem!
* We can erase your bad credit ? 100% guaranteed.
* Create a new credit identity ? legally.
* We can remove bankruptcies, judgments, liens, and bad loans from your credit file forever!
Do yourself a favor and save some money, too. Don't believe these promises. Only time, a conscious effort, and a personal debt repayment plan will improve your credit report.
If you are trying to lose weight, what do you do? You change your eating habits by reducing your intake of fat grams and calories, and you increase your amount of physical activity. Successfully losing weight and keeping it off requires a change in your lifestyle and frame of mind. Changing your financial position for the better is no different.
Once you get to the point where you believe that budgeting and saving are better than having on a new outfit or driving around in a new car, then you are on your way to improving your condition. Being financially stable and becoming debt-free will no doubt change your financial condition for the better.
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No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report. The law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete. There is no charge for this. Everything a credit repair clinic can do for you legally, you can do for yourself at little or no cost. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
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Old habits are hard to break, but they're not impossible. You must first realize that you need to improve your money-management habits, then you must want to change. Finally, you must believe that you can do it. If you believe in yourself, you are more likely to be successful in changing by improving your old money-management habits. What's Luck Got to Do with It? Absolutely nothing. Some people blame their unfortunate financial conditions on their bad luck. But, luck has nothing to do with whether you are living from paycheck to paycheck or whether you are financially stable. Luck, whether good or bad, is something you have no control over, an accident. For example, a good break is buying a lottery ticket and hitting the eighty-million-dollar jackpot, when your chances of winning were only one in eighty million. A misfortune is being at a stadium, watching a football game in the rain along with fifty thousand other folks and being struck by lightning. Being in a bad financial situation or not being able to pay your bills is not something based on luck.
You may not have control over a lot of things, but your financial situation is not one of them. So don't blame a mishap for your bad financial condition. If you do, then you have succumbed to the belief that your financial condition has nothing to do with the choices and decisions you make, and that there is nothing you can do to improve it. Start today believing that your financial situation has everything to do with your money-management decisions. Then, you can start making better financial decisions and stop blaming bad luck.
To go from spending most of your money to saving most of it requires that you get mentally prepared. In fact, it is the key to successfully improving your money-management habits and ultimately becoming debt-free. To begin, you must first convince yourself that saving money is what you really want or need to do. Then, start repeating to yourself, "I can do this, I can do this." Next, you must start believing that you really can do it. Once you believe you can improve your financial condition and you want to improve it, then and only then are you mentally prepared to begin the journey to a debt-free life.
About the Author: About The Author
Michael Saunders has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He edits a site on Credit Repair and Debt Consolidation and is president of Information Organizers, LLC.
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