Some people get in debt very quickly such as the newly graduated student with his or her first job who must immediately get his first new car and charge all of their other needs on their first credit card.
Other people build up debt so slowly that it takes twenty years to suddenly realize that it will take the rest of their lives to pay off these bills.
And other people end up in debt because they lost a job or had some other emergency and yet continue to spend borrowed money.
We need to assume that whichever way you have accumulated your debt, you are now reading this article because you have decided it is time to get out of debt.
After all, as with any problem, the first step in getting out of debt is realizing you need to do something about it.
In this case, we hope your decision is to get out from under all of your debt.
But getting out is much more difficult then getting into it in the first place was.
The usual way to pay off these loans is to decide how much extra you can pay on each bill each month until they are paid off.
However, this can be a little discouraging when you calculate it will take you the next 10 years to pay it all off! Wouldn't it be nice if you could clean it all up in just 1 year? Usually, you can.
We are going to be listing and explaining many things you can do to develop a debt-free life including ways to enjoy your life while spending less, how to pay off which bills first, and how to make more money in order to pay everything off.
Obviously, the more of our methods you use at one time, the faster you will be debt-free.
But the big question is, for how long a period of time can you live on a very tight budget while working very hard? Human beings can take a lot of stress and strain.
Just think of how long you have been worrying so much about your money problems that you are actually taking years off of your life? However, most people, having become used to quite comfortable life styles, cannot live under this stress for very long.
In fact, the average citizen can only stick to a plan that includes depriving themselves, for 12 to 18 months maximum before just simply giving up on that plan.
This is why it is very important for us to develop a working plan that we can stick to for just 1 year.
It will not help you at all to develop a plan that will take you years to finish knowing that you will probably just give up 12 months from now.
And once you have actually created your plan and stuck to it for one year and, therefore, solved your immediate debt problem, you will have learned how to keep from getting so far into debt again.
There are even hidden benefits such as what your children and other family members will learn from watching you.
It will not be just you learning to develop and stick to a plan, but you will be helping others learn how to also.
So even though you will have to work very hard to get out of your debt in just one year, it will also be easier to do so because it is only for one year.
From the day you start working on your plan, mark your calendar for just one year and you will have a reasonable goal to work toward.
And when you are tempted to give up, you will be able to count how few weeks you have left before you will be debt-free as well as how much better off you are now then you were just a few weeks ago.