You Can Be Your Own Debt Reduction Coach

Debt reduction is serious business.  You can ignore it, hire others to help manage it, or learn to be your own debt reduction coach.  If you decide to do it yourself, here are a few tips to help you.  Here goes:

1. Coaching yourself is all about the feedback.  Every month you chart the money in and the money out.  Your "score" is what's left over.  Your goal is to find creative ways to increase your personal score.  It's important to write down what you spend so you know where your money is going.  This is the feedback you need for the upcoming months.
2. Find the patterns in your spending causing you to drift off course.  If eating out is eating a whole in your monthly spending, stop eating out.  If shopping for groceries without a defined shopping list is causing you to make too many splurges, resolve to shop only with lists.
3. Decide to make improvements monthly.  Start slowly and keep tracking.
4. Target one debt you have that you want to eliminate and use your savings in your budget to eliminate that debt.  
5. Refuse to borrow money while you're eliminating your debts, one at a time until they're all gone.

If you like competition, consider debt reduction as a game.  You are competing against yourself.  No matter how bad you think you are, you are capable of winning if your goal is continuous improvement.  The longer you play the debt reduction game, the more you will understand yourself and the better you will get at reducing debts.  Have a great day.