$3300 of debt in three months. Go.

[Mounds]

If you had to pay off $3300 worth of debt, how would you pull it off? If you already have done something similar, how did you do it?
I'm gung-ho to get this done. If I pull it off, it will put me six months ahead of where I thought I would be financially.

[roxyruby]

Get my dad to pay it off for me

[InterfaceLeader]

There's only two ways to do this.

1. Cut expenses and send savings to debt
2. Earn extra money and send income to debt.


For number 1

- Cut all unneccesary services, e.g. cable, landline, gym, magazine subscriptions.
- Don't eat out for 3 months. Buy beans and rice. Grow your own vegetables. Drink only tap water.
- Avoid driving - walk to the store, to work (or cycle if you already own a cycle)


For number 2

- Sell everything that's worth some money and that you won't *need*
- Do odd jobs for people, e.g. wash cars, weed gardens, walk dogs.
- Get a second job
- Freelance your skills for money
- Engage in any other 'money raising' ideas, though I would say that you will need to tend towards the quick payout type work rather than the long-term business building work if your goal is to pay off debt.

[roxyruby]

Originally Posted by InterfaceLeader

There's only two ways to do this.

1. Cut expenses and send savings to debt
2. Earn extra money and send income to debt.


For number 1

- Cut all unneccesary services, e.g. cable, landline, gym, magazine subscriptions.
- Don't eat out for 3 months. Buy beans and rice. Grow your own vegetables. Drink only tap water.
- Avoid driving - walk to the store, to work (or cycle if you already own a cycle)


For number 2

- Sell everything that's worth some money and that you won't *need*
- Do odd jobs for people, e.g. wash cars, weed gardens, walk dogs.
- Get a second job
- Freelance your skills for money
- Engage in any other 'money raising' ideas, though I would say that you will need to tend towards the quick payout type work rather than the long-term business building work if your goal is to pay off debt.

Can I just say, you are so pretty and cute

[InterfaceLeader]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

Can I just say, you are so pretty and cute

Why thank you

[darkun]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

Get my dad to pay it off for me

Quality answer Roxy. However you forgot the other option of 'find a nice guy to pay it off for me'

[Requiem]

If I really had to pay off debt like that, I'd just sell a few shares of stock to cover it. I'd prefer not to, though, since I don't like capital gains taxes.

Basically what I'm getting at is that people should work on building up sizable asset reserves as early as possible and should have robust emergency funds.

But as to the direct question, I think an earlier post outlined it pretty well, and my list is quite similar.

-Do all of your own cooking with healthy and inexpensive food.
-Buy NOTHING unnecessary for this month.
-If you have a job that has flexible income (number of hours or owning your own business, as opposed to a set salary), then try to work as hard as possible to get every bit you can.
-Drop some bills. Take a vacation from tv or whatever else. View it as a good thing, not a sacrifice.
-Take this moment as a blessing in disguise to go through your belongings and simplify. Sell everything you haven't used in this past month (besides the obvious like seasonal things). Don't try to find excuses for why one day you'll need this random thing you haven't used in years.
-Try to find some short term work, as previously mentioned. Maybe the census if you live in the US? They're hiring hundreds of thousands, though it might be too late. I'm not really sure.

[AdamA]

Originally Posted by Mounds

If you had to pay off $3300 worth of debt, how would you pull it off? If you already have done something similar, how did you do it?
I'm gung-ho to get this done. If I pull it off, it will put me six months ahead of where I thought I would be financially.

I've actually never been in debt before.

1) In your case, I would say pay for everything in cash. If you don't have the cash don't buy it. Cut up your credit cards.
2) When I cut back on spending, I bag lunches and eat at home as much as possible. If you have to go out, save half your entree for another meal. Now you've just halved the cost in some sense.
3) Don't go to Starbucks. Join your coffee club.
4) Get rid of automatic recurring expenses - e.g., Netflix, cable TV.

You can read books like "Start Late Finish Rich" by David Bach. They really helped me to become even more aware of my spending patterns.

[CoolBee]

Track spending
Go into 'survival mode' - cabbage sandwiches are great because you can freeze them - buy a large loaf of cheap bread ready sliced, get a very heavy solid cabbage, shred it, place liberally between two slices of bread- include some shredded onion if you like to liven it up and, freeze a week's worth of sarnies.
Forget nutritional balance - now is the time to fill up on oats - buy a few kilo of cheap oats and have for 3 meals a day for a week every month.
Challenge yourself for very cheap weeks. For example, in the UK as a PhD student on a substantially reduced pay from what I was on before, I had 'cheap week' every month when I had to live on £5 (about $7) which meant lots of left overs, scraping out the toothpaste tubes, oats for 3 meals a day and so on. It won't kill you :

If you can get a part time job, do it.

Every time you want to buy something, look at it and think "do I NEED it now?"

If you're good company and unattached - how about 'companion' to women in town alone on business? (Doesn't have to involve anything 'immoral'!)

[roxyruby]

Originally Posted by InterfaceLeader

Why thank you

welcomes ^ ^

[Brenda26]

Interesting -

I actually did something similar in about six weeks once. First of all, everything that's been said here is completely true and I probably used every one of these techniques to accomplish my goal.

But there was another element that really helped - that was making it a game.

First I wrote the goal down and got my husband to agree to play with me.

Then we started finding little pockets of money laying around - anything we could get our hands on and started flowing it towards the debt. If we had a jar with change, we took it to the coin changer, then plunked down the money to pay the debt.

We looked at our budget and came up with a strategic plan to forego all luxuries and treats for awhile. All that money went towards the debt.

It was almost like we created a "vacuum," because what started to happen was that more money began to manifest. Example, parents decided to gift us with money out of the blue. Maybe we got some rebate checks here and there, etc. etc. All of that money appearing out of nowhere was plunked down towards the debt, too.

So in about 6 weeks, we had miraculously paid it off. The reason I mention the game aspect, is because at first, we didn't make enough to make it. On paper, it appeared to be impossible. But making the decision, then accepting the challenge and making it fun, made all the difference.

One word of caution: If you doubt you can do it, you won't be able to do it. So you have to eliminate doubt. Deciding you're going to win the game helps with that.

[Mounds]

I'm pretty darn convinced that this is going to happen Thanks a lot for all the tips. I'm going to use many of them, especially eating at home. I think that is our (my wife and I) biggest vice.
Aside from that, here's the plan: my wife's income from her job tends to get pissed away on things we don't need. Eating out (go figure), movies, ect. Plan is to take $500 of that income per month towards the loan. That leaves $1800.
The next $1000 will be selling junk on eBay. Hoping to get this done by the end of April. I have over 300 books I've been meaning to sell off, plus some DVD's and games. Lets say that leaves $800.
Around mid-April, bug collecting season takes off in Manitoba. Start pushing bugs till the end of June to make the last $800. I know some people probably guffaw at my method for getting the last $800 but take note: this is a stupidly simple way to make money and all I had to do to get to this point is read books. Imagine if you learned about a skill that was in high demand?

[CoolBee]

Totally agree with Brenda, make it a game! That was the approach I used - let's just see how little we can live on!

Bug- pushing - had to think what that was! People buy bugs?

Just thought - have you explored Tightwads? or any of the frugal living sites?

[Mounds]

Yep, people buy bugs. There's a surprising number of people no less.
Now that I think of it, I've never seen any Egyptian species on the market...

[CoolBee]

Originally Posted by Mounds

Yep, people buy bugs. There's a surprising number of people no less.
Now that I think of it, I've never seen any Egyptian species on the market...

We have 168 different species of ants apparently

Ants of Egypt

.