Thought for today:

When we were still suffering the effects of active debting, under earning and overspending, we became desperate people.  Financial chaos had become familiar – even normal, with drama at every turn.  We wanted to hide and have someone take it all away.

A member shares:

“When I was a kid, I learned to behave.  I didn’t speak out of turn.  I followed the rules.  But spending made me into a different kind of person – one who couldn’t control themselves.  Toward the end of my debting, I would spend hours in stores, wandering around like a hungry zombie.

“I was so in debt, I didn’t know how to get out.  Creditors stopped giving me credit.   I was afraid all the time.

“It wasn’t until I became teachable in DA that things turned around.  I needed to be willing to do what the people in DA had done before me.

The seven habits

To get better, we need to be open to taking the Twelve Steps and using the Twelve Tools of DA.  We need a shift in consciousness – an attitude of willingness to follow the path others have laid out.

1. We need to be willing to learn about money – how compound interest makes it grow, how dollar cost averaging works, how to shop for bargains, how to let go of unnecessary expenses, how to track our numbers, etc.
2. We need to learn not to be afraid of issues and problems that come up when we deal with the fallout of our debting – creditors, family members, debt repayment schedules.  We can look at all of these as opportunities for growth.
3. We need to be curious and ask questions about our debts.  Who owns our debt?   What is the interest rate?  What can we afford to pay each month (after having a PRM)?
4. We need to study how our Spending Plan changes each month.  We need to try to see the big picture.  We need to set targets for each month, and check out how close we get to the target.  If something works well for us, we need to repeat it, expand on it.
5. We need to take the initiative to create our Visions for the future. We do this by setting long-term Visions for up to five years from now.  We follow that up with one-year goals that support those Visions.  Then we set one-month goals to support the one-year goals.  Then we create one week goals to take on smaller pieces of our Vision.  Then we create goals for today.  We don’t ever do any of this perfectly.  We need these goals because they are targets to dream towards.  And these aren’t other people’s goals, they are what we want.
6. We need to be proactive.  Of course there are times when we need to be reactive to what others’ needs are, but we should always try to get back to our Vision. (See habit #5).
7. If we make a mistake, we need to be willing to take the initiative and course-correct.  We need to be able to choose a new path if the one we are on is no longer working.  Usually, the correction will be small.  We practice not fighting change, but adapting to it.  The alternative is to deny change, which never works.

Ask: