Just so you’re prepared it may be agonizing slow…like watching paint dry on a humid day.

But before you can start getting rid of it you have to know how much you owe.

That’s step 2 in getting out of debt.  Most people who have a lot of debt don’t know how much they owe and don’t want to know because writing it down and seeing it in print will literally make them feel ill (as in “I’m going to puke all over that piece of paper right now” – gross but that was exactly how I felt).

I used to live in a constant state of denial and avoidance about my bills.  I wouldn’t open my credit card statements and did my best to be as far away from the house as possible when my husband was paying bills because I didn’t want to face him because I knew he would be justifiably angry when he saw them.  I would even sometimes pretend I was really sick so my husband would feel too guilty to yell at me.

My favorite response though was to cry and promise to not do it anymore (a promise I knew deep down inside that I had no intention of keeping).  I did some pretty awful things to avoid talking about the debt I was piling up.  It was irresponsible, juvenile, and a completely rotten way to treat my husband.

When I finally sat down with my husband and wrote down every penny of debt we had, and then added it up, I truly did literally start to feel ill.

But in order to pay off that ugly debt a person has to know how much there is.

So grab a pencil and piece of paper, and then go get all your bills from wherever you have shoved them so you didn’t have to look at them.  Open each bill and on that piece of paper write:

- The name of each creditor that you owe money to

- Total amount owed

- Minimum Payment

- Due Date

If you want you can also write down the interest rate of each bill.

Then add up all your minimum payments.  That’s the bare minimum you need each month to start getting rid of the debt.  But you’ll need to pay more than the minimum if you want to get the debt paid off in a reasonable amount of time.

To get enough money to pay those minimum payments plus as much extra as possible, do whatever you can to cut expenses and increaase your earnings.  It’s also a great time to sell anything you don’t need and to immediately use the proceeds to help pay a bill (not to go shopping for more stuff).  Sell whatever you can and be like Dave Ramsey says, “Sell everything but the kids.”

In step 3 I’ll talk about that 4 letter word – budget.  (Yes I can count.  Yes I know it’s more than 4 letters long.  But mentioning the word “budget” to some people causes a look of pain so severe to cross their face I wonder if I’ve just cussed them out without realizing it.)