If you have credit card debt, auto loans or any other loan you are throwing money out the window every single day. Money that you could use towards savings, retirement, vacation, making your dream come through, start a business or a million better things than giving your hard earned money away to a bank or other financial institution.
It may not seem like a lot of money when you look at it month to month, but if you add it up those months becomes a lot of money. Let’s say you are paying 150 dollars a month in interest. Not too bad, right? I mean, 150 dollars is a lot of money but it’s not a sum of money you can exactly quit your job over. But 150 dollars x 12 months equals 1,800 dollars! OK…now we are talking about a nice sum of dollars. Let’s say you have been throwing money out the window for 5 years. That equals 9,000 dollars. 10 years becomes 18,000 dollars. I don’t know about you but that is a lot of money to just throw out the window.
I’m stepping this one up a tad by using 300 dollars a month (if you have auto loan, student loan and credit card debt that you are paying minimum payments on you are probably in that ballpark). You are now throwing out 3,600 dollars a year. 18,000 dollars in 5 years. And of course, in ten years you will have thrown out what some people make in a year. A nice sum of 36,000 dollars. Ouch!
Now you may love throwing money away but I doubt it. If you are like me, I rather keep the money or donate them to a good cause. When you start adding up how much money you pay in interest you get a better picture of what you are doing to yourself by having consumer debt. Or any debt. Make the money work for you instead of for someone else.
Scared to sit down and add up how much money you are throwing out the window each month and year? Don’t be. Don’t beat yourself up for having thrown out so much money already. You can’t do anything about that. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. Put that number up on your fridge to remind you each day to work hard on getting rid of your debt. Because that debt is standing between you and your dream!
