Now that you’re happily (?) tracking away your expenses, which we know will take a while to keep doing before we have a solid, reliable list, we are going to continue with other steps we can take in the meantime. To start with, we are going to pull up an overview of any outstanding debts – also known as liabilities – you have. Sounds like fun? No I didn’t think so, thinking about your debts is usually not a lot of fun, but since your debts are probably also one of your biggest worries or financial strains anyway, we need to find out how bad (or not) the situation is to begin with.

Borrowing money is a relatively common thing in our current society and although it might sound like a great way to finance big purchases, the problem is that as long as you have debts, you are not only tied to paying back money all the time, you are furthermore consistently losing money. Borrowing money comes at a high price: the interest that you are charged can been enormous and in later steps we’ll look at how quickly this interest can add up to massive extra charges. Yet we seem to always be borrowing money these days, first to get through college, then to buy a car, a house, that fancy holiday and it becomes more and more of a habit to buy first and finance later. And kid yourself not: unless you are paying off your credit cards in full at the end of each month, the overdraft on any of these cards are loans too! Continue reading “Step 4: List your Debts” →