My Free Site for Getting Out of Debt Gary North from Specific Answers

My Free Site for Getting Out of Debt

Gary North

Millions of people are up to their eyeballs in debt. I have created a site to help people get out of debt. The site 100% free.

I have written about my goals for this site:

DELIVERANCE FROM DEBT That's the name of my new website. It's a free site. There are no ads on it. It is aimed at Christians who find themselves so far in debt that their credit ratings, their homes, and their solvency are at risk. They are at the end of their ropes. That's when they are ready to re-think what they have done to themselves in the pursuit of American consumerism. You can access the site here:

http://www.DeliveranceFromDebt.com Debt is a habit. For governments, it's unbreakable. Government debt always rises. That's because politicians believe that they can always raise money by imposing new taxes.
The Federal government this year will run a deficit of 13% of Gross Domestic Product. As recently as a year ago, this would have been inconceivable. The Secretary of the Treasury told Chinese officials on June 1 that the U.S. will bring this down to 3%. He did not say how or when.
For individuals, deliverance from debt is possible without declaring bankruptcy. This is not easy, but it's possible.
Some of my readers have done this. I asked for testimonials from my readers, and there were some powerful stories. I have posted the best of these on my site.

http://www.DeliveranceFromDebt.com/public/department41.cfm I would like all of them to join my site as volunteer counselors. My site has Q&A forums where people can ask questions about getting out of debt. They want real-world answers from people who have gone through this experience.
You may not be deep in debt. But if you have ever been in debt and have climbed out of the hole, I would like you to join my site. You can help people. Click here:

http://www.deliverancefromdebt.com/public/10.cfm

A SITE FOR CHRISTIANS The techniques for getting out of debt are universal. They are simple to describe, but difficult to implement.
Why target only Christians? To concentrate the focus the site. A special-interest site aimed at a targeted audience is more likely to attract people who are ready to take action. I cannot compete with Dave Ramsey, who has a broad-based site and a radio show. He has a lock on the broadcasting industry. My site is narrowcasting.
There is another factor. Christians who get deeply into debt have a guilt problem. They are aware of the Apostle Paul's injunction: "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another" (Romans 13:8a). They know that they have violated a fundamental principle of their religion. I have taken this motivation as a guide to structuring my site.
I also remind them of Moses' words.

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail (Deuteronomy 28:43-44).

Consumer debt is a curse. It is a mark of a present- oriented person who has discounted the cost of his actions. The consumer has built a prison for himself. Plastic has become concrete.
If someone of a different religion wants to copy my site, I'll help him do it. If I have written anything on my site that he thinks could help him show people how to get out of debt, I'll let him reprint it. This is a joint effort.
I am working my side of the street. That does not mean I am trying to create a monopoly.


A 12-STEP, 12-WEEK COURSE
I have written a 12-week course for people who are serious about getting out of debt and staying out. People can sign up for it on my site's home page.
The course is a how-to program. It provides the tools needed. Then the site's forums will provide assistance.
How-to programs are self-help programs. Mine is less of a self-help program than a 12-step addiction-deliverance program. If a person deep in debt could get out on his own, he already would have done it.
The problem that we all face in life is that it is not good enough to know what to do; we then have to do it. Someone may want to lose weight, but he is not going to lose weight if he reads a diet book while munching on chips and bean dip. It may be the best diet book in the world, but unless he changes his eating habits, he is not going to lose any weight. It is exactly the same thing with personal finances.
Those of us who are involved in direct-response marketing know that it is always easier to sell a cure than prevention. There is an old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The problem is, most people are unwilling to pay for the ounce of prevention, so they wind up paying a pound of cure.
If people were trained by their parents from an early age to budget their money, they would probably not fall into the trap of massive debt when they become adults. There is no guarantee that this would be the case, because the lure of "buy now, pay later" is very great. But, on the whole, people who learn good habits with respect to their spending when they are teenagers are much less likely to fall into bad spending habits when they are adults.
If someone follows my recommendations each week for all 12 weeks, he will gain a new set of habits. These new habits will change his life. But, as with any new habits, it takes time to make them a part of people's lives. Even more difficult, when they have replaced a long-entrenched series of bad habits, a person finds that it is very difficult to keep from falling back. One of the reasons why I divided up the course into 12 weekly lessons is because I know that people need time to make the transition from debt-based living to thrift-based living. It is almost impossible in a brief period of time to make all of the changes that you need to make. So, I have put together a course that takes you through the fundamentals in a 12-week period. The course does not simply tell people the fundamentals; it enables them to adopts these new habits as part of a new way of living.
In the same way that a diet is not supposed to be a temporary change of eating, so is this program not supposed to be a one-time debt-reduction program. A diet may work for the period of time that you are on the diet, but if you go off the diet, it will have done you no good.
In the same way that a diet does not do you much good if you see it as a temporary change to achieve a short-term goal, such as going back to your high school reunion in a slimmer condition, so my course will do you no good if you think it is merely a means of getting debt free on a one-time basis.
The goal should not be to get debt-free on a one-time basis. The goal should be to stay debt-free for life. A diet will not keep anyone slender unless it becomes a new way of eating. The same is true of the information that is in my course.


BENEFITS AND COSTS
A good salesman presents the benefits of whatever he is selling. I decided to list some of the benefits that a student will receive if he adopt the spending program that I present in my course. (If this reads like an advertisement, that's because it is. I wrote it for someone who does not read financial newsletters. I will use Google ads to draw people to a page that has this message on it.)

You will have greater confidence in yourself. You will receive the foundations of a lifelong success program.
You will find that you have increased income every month after expenses.
You will be able to leave an inheritance for your children. I don't mean simply an economic inheritance; I mean an inheritance relating to their lifestyle.

An honest salesman also discusses costs. With respect to the material in my course, these costs are actually benefits, but a person who has found himself in deep debt does not initially perceive that these costs are benefits.

It requires a leap of faith. It requires tithing, which means reduced consumption initially.
It requires a systematic program of budgeting.
It requires constant self-assessment through a series of budget reviews.
It requires a savings program.

ACTION STEPS
First, there will be a weekly action step. This action step is required for the next week's lesson. These steps are cumulative.
Second, I offer a series of tools that anyone can use to implement the recommended plan.
Why should anyone do all this? Let's go through the basics.

First you are worrying about money. You find that you have more month than money. If you stick with my course, you will stop worrying about money because you will have more money than month or he Second, you are paying other people for past purchases. When you're through with my course, you will no longer pay anybody for past purchases.
Third, you are burdened by a sense of personal failure. There is a reason for this. You have failed. I am going to show you how to succeed.
Fourth, You lack a lifetime plan of action. I'm going to show you how to construct a new lifetime plan, and then follow through on.
Fifth, you are consuming your children's inheritance in the broadest sense of the term. They cannot look to you for guidance in the handling of their personal finances. Even if you know what to do, you're going to be in the position of generations of parents who tell their children, "Do as I say, and not as I do." That statement has never convinced very many children.

Where should you be after 12 weeks?

First, you should be rejoicing at your life's benefits. Second you will be much less of a borrower. You will learn how to become a lender. Third, you will find that your expanding your personal influence. This is part of the training of my course. Fourth, you will find that you are able to fulfill more of your life's goals. Not only that, you will have new goals that you have not paid any attention to previously.
Fifth, you will find that you are on the road to accumulating wealth. You ought to be there now, but you're not. This is going to change.

The Bible teaches that the borrower is servant to the lender (Proverbs 22:7). I show people how to cease being servants to lenders.


THE COSTS OF NOT CHANGING
People who are in debt have very little wiggle room with their budget. They have no room for emergencies. The trouble is, emergencies always arise. So, people go into greater debt in order to handle the emergencies. This is a downward spiral.
When you are in debt, you have low mobility. You have low mobility geographically, and you have low mobility in your career. You are unable to take advantage of opportunities that spring up, because you are so far in debt that you are unable to rely on personal financial reserves long enough to take advantage of the opportunity.
Another curse of debt living is that you make purchases that you later feel guilty about. You are tired of the guilt, but you seem to be unable to break the addiction of making purchases. I'm going to show you how to escape that bondage.
You face higher interest costs than other people, precisely because you have so much debt. You cannot take advantage of low mortgage rates, because lenders are not going to lend you money at the lowest possible rates.
You pay more for the goods that you buy because you are not paying cash. You do not have cash, so you are not in a position to negotiate lower prices. This is always a disadvantage. Money talks. Cash talks loudest of all.


BUT YOU KNOW ALL THIS
Millions of people don't.
It's amazing that they don't. Their parents did not tell them, or maybe they just did not listen. Or maybe they figured they could beat the system.
My goal is to get cooperation from churches in promoting my site. Churches see their income falling. They ought to offer financial counseling, but few do. The deacons are called upon to provide aid to families that would not need the aid if they had not gone into debt.
The site is here: www.DeliveranceFromDebt.com