Understanding the problem
Debt is one of the biggest problems in today's consumerist society. We are constantly told on the TV, our phones, by our friends, family and colleagues that we "need" to have the latest money-draining liability whether we can afford it or not.
This has led to a credit-first mindset to receive the instant gratification of getting what we want and paying the price for it later. The danger in this is that the lack of regulation and education on how to manage this results for many in a cycle of never-ending debt with no visible way out.
Each year 420,000 people in 'problem debt' contemplate taking their own life in England alone (see Support for services who can assist with this) and it's unacceptable that there is no plan available to offer to people in this situation that doesn't involve getting into more debt, until now.
Learning the solution
1. The first step is to have a budget, if you don't yet please see Budgeting for how to create one.
2. Now create another list of ALL your debts such as loans, credit cards, mortgages and anything else. It's important to get a clear picture of the full amount to get the situation under control, burying your head in the sand will only allow things to get worse. A spreadsheet is recommended so that it's easy to update and track your progress each month.
3. Beside each of the debts write the amount that must be paid towards them each month to ensure they don't increase any further with interest and make sure these are included as outgoings on your original budget.
4. Work out the total of all your debts then divide it by the amount set aside in your budget each month to invest. This will give you the number of months it will take to become debt free, which is also how many times you need to multiply your current capital to clear the debt.
FREExample
As of May 2022 the average UK house price was £283,000 imagine you have a mortgage to that value as well as a car loan and some credit card debt totalling £300,000.
As of May 2022 the average UK weekly wage was £601 which we can multiply by 4 to give us £2,404 as a monthly wage.
If we assume you are setting aside 10% as per Budgeting (more is always better) that gives you £240.40 a month
300000/240.40= 1247.9201 months of repayments (or times your monthly savings amount you need to acquire)
For perspective divide this by 12 to find out how many years of saving it will take to clear your debts:
1247.9201/12=103.9933 years of repayments
5. Now you may want to reduce that a little, or a lot! Let's see the return needed on that money if you'd like to pay it off in 10 years which we can find using the general root:
365 x 10 = 3,650 days
3650√1247.9201 = 1.0019551234305 times growth is needed every day.
We can round this up to 0.2% returns a day on your initial investment per day which will reduce the time to pay those debts by 94 years! That's without factoring in in the additional £240.40 you will be adding in each month and compounding even further so any mathematicians who can come up with an accurate formula please contact us via your preferred method at the bottom of the page!
Try this yourself, modify the numbers for your own circumstances and make a realistic plan building on the knowledge learned from 1% Better to harness the power that marginal gains can have over time. Keep track of your progress each day to remind you not to stray from the path to financial FREEdom!
I hope you've found this information useful, please send in any questions or feedback using the email button at the bottom of the page.
