Starting
Today
by
Richard T.
In much 12 step literature we see a theme of "just for today." I am sure that the words in Jerry Mundis' book, "just for today, I do not need to debt" helped many of you just as they did me. There were many times that I used those words to postpone debting just one more day. Later, I will tell the story of how I postponed getting gas for my truck several days in a row until postponing would have brought on dire consequences, and then I only charged enough gas to last half a day until later that day when I would be paid.
There are many lists out there that begin with "Just for Today."
Great words perhaps, but as for me, I shall use "Starting Today!"
Much in my life seems to be like that movie from the 70s (1975?) where, if there was a plot, I can't remember it. The most memorable part about the movie was the title song by Henry Mancini. Decisions were made "Moment to Moment" with no seeming direction.
The neat thing about DA is we are not left with "just for today." We are taught to use "plans." Action Plans. Spending Plans. That to me is something greater like "Starting Today!"
Starting Today:
I will begin with the end in mind.
I will ask myself, is this action giving in to smallest part of me that doesn't care about tomorrow, or is it what I would tell myself to do if I were my own best friend?
I will work on my major goals even if it is only to read them again.
I will add to this list tomorrow. But I will cheer myself on for Starting it Today.
_____________________________________________________________________
Chapters:
Seeking Solvency Rather Than Avoiding Debt
Chaque Action est une Victoire !
A Resolve Constructed with Careful Deliberation
Schedule a Pressure Relief Meeting
What is the Source of Your Visions?
_____________________________________________________________________
I have become a student about debt, its causes and cures, and have read a great many books dealing with money management.
Now it is time for me to write a book. My book will never be "conference" approved. But then, not even Jerry Mundis' books are conference approved, and he follows the DA line more closely than I do.
I have decided not to read any books along these lines for a few months so that I can be sure that I am directing my thoughts to what I actually know and have experienced rather than "answer" particular points of view. I listened to Dave Ramsey last night. I think I agree with everything he teaches except not as much. But now I am directing my thoughts to answering why the radical surgery he suggests seems like binge dieting to me and I did that with eliminating debt in the past only to add greater amounts of it. I know Dave has had the "spiritual" conversion but he doesn't teach it as well as Mary Hunt does. Oh, gosh, there I go again.
Yes, I will write my own book. But I will need to attribute what is now my own to a rich legacy that began, as George S Clason said, five thousand years ago.
What do we teach at a person's first DA meeting? Hopefully, not the 12 steps. Yes, they are already at Step One, or they wouldn't have even come to a meeting. They are looking for a bunch of tools to put in a bag and take home. I tell them to come to at least six meetings before deciding one way or another if DA is for them. And then I tell them that they need to write down every penny that comes in and every penny that goes out for one month. Yes, I have helped with emergency Pressure Relief Meetings. I can think of one instance where a person stayed in the program after having a Pressure Relief Meeting before they had their thirty days of records. Take away the emergency and you take away that need for Step One before the person is ready to move on to Step Three. So, the only thing I will teach is a couple of tools. (1) They have to keep coming to meetings. (2) They have to keep track of every penny in and out. For most people at this point, if someone would lend them or give them enough money to get through to next month, you wouldn't see them again until the month after. Do I need to teach abstinence at this point? This is where Jerry and I differ greatly. Our definition of abstinence is different. I cannot teach abstinence until after a person has a spending plan and you can not do a spending plan without a history of the person's income and expenditures.
In the next installment, I will explain what I believe abstinence is.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
In chapter four of Stacy Johnson's LIFE OR DEBT, he gives A One Week Plan for a Lifetime of Financial Freedom.
There are some really good suggestions about the order of things in assessing your financial situation. Day five: Start tracking your cash expenses.
Day six: Start reviewing where your money is going.
All well and good, except I wasn't ready to do the things he suggests for the first four days until much later in my program. It seems that each of us are different in how we come to understanding our debting behavior and each of us were individual in how we got into trouble. Can you believe that what worked for Stacy was "Visioning" before he even started tracking his money? I had a difficult enough time just seeing myself not debting later that day!
Most of us come to DA with only the vaguest of ideas of how bad off we really are. Not really all that strange when you consider that we have carefully avoided the truth.
If we really do need an emergency Pressure Relief Meeting, most of the information that would be needed to formulate a plan is available. We have that information in utility bills, bank statements, credit card statements, checks or images of checks we have made out, and some by guess and by golly estimations of our cash expenditures. It is a giant jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces missing. It will take days to assemble and sift the information. I used a "five for a dollar" 70 page spiral binder to start going through that kind of stuff. I put in the important and relevant information about how much, what interest rate, monthly minimum, contact information, and a log of who I talked to and what was said.
All of that work and still not a change in habits! It is essential that one begin recording all spending and all income. It is not essential at first that it needs to go into a spreadsheet or some financial software. The essential thing is that a new habit is created to replace our coping behavior of avoidance.
I firmly believe that the reason a lot people who have early Pressure Relief Meetings drop out of the program is they have been given a quick fix to an immediate problem. Those seeking a long term solution are more patient to see the results perhaps six months away after some months of even more dire circumstances than they have had up to that point.
Is abstinence possible from the first day in the program? Yes. But let's look at the definition of abstinence. Debtors Anonymous did away with Solvency in the program three years ago. I am being facetious, I know. But the fellowship did vote to lower the program to a lower denominator: "Our primary purpose is to stop debting one day at a time and to help other compulsive debtors to stop incurring unsecured debt."
- Preamble of Debtors Anonymous
Revised and
approved August 2003
We no longer need to be solvent. We are only shooting for the lower mark of not writing a check on our "check protection," using a credit card, or paying a monthly bill after the due date.
Writing a bad check is an easy thing to put an exact moment on. An exact moment that we feel we had no way of foreseeing. We had no idea the washing machine would break down! The appliance repair call was one hundred dollars plus parts and it has to go on the credit card. We feel we have "sinned." We begin our abstinent days count again for the third time in a month. Failure again!
I urge people to not worry about "not debting" yet. We need to get a base line before we will be able to know what needs to be done. I urge them to get along the best they can and if they can pay their minimums to do so. I also teach that it is better to not pay a creditor than to replace credit with more expensive credit. I teach that it is better to pay the fifty dollar late charge for the rent than to incur overdraft fees for a check on an account that is already less than zero.
What do they do in the mean time? I know they don't want to dig up all of those financial records of the past. But I do know there is a very good chance they will track their numbers for the next thirty days. That thirty day habit can grow into a lifelong program. After we get used to facing the present, we can gradually take time to clean up the past.
I came to DA nearly two years behind on filing my taxes. I was two and a half years behind before I finally caught up. I had ninety days of near perfect records of spending and income before I was able to go back and piece together the records needed to get the refunds I was due. As badly as I needed the money, and I did believe I had refunds coming, I could not face the mess until I had the present under control.
At one point during those ninety days, I used a credit card for gas. I was short on cash as I was trying to remain current on my payments. Every day I was watching the fuel gauge. It was 75 miles round trip to work and back. I used the mantras from Jerry Mundis' book. Just for today, I do not need to debt. On Thursday, I needed gas to get home and I would need to have gas to get back to work. Friday was pay day and I would be able to fill up on that day. I charged enough gas to get home and then back to work. I did not fill the tank. I did not feel that I had sinned. The month ended up a plus since I spent less than I earned and I had made some progress in debt reduction.
Two parts to the definition of solvency: (1) have less money go out than comes in and (2) have greater assets than what debts you owe It has taken a number of years to get to the point I fit the second part of the definition. It has only happened because I am paying close attention to part one.
I don't believe that those only trying to get out of debt will have success. It may be a worthy goal to get to the point you are no longer worth less than zero. But if that's all there is to DA, it isn't enough and people will come and go and our actual numbers will not increase exponentially as they could and should.
I might be a maverick, but I will teach cash flow. You need more flowing in than you have flowing out. I actually believe the method of payment for those dollars flowing out has much less to do with our debting than with our unwillingness to watch the flow.
You will have a difficult time getting me into a discussion about whether the debting moment came when you had to use a bad check to keep the utilities from being shut off, or whether it was when you used the money for a night out at the movies and dinner with money that should have been there for the electric bill. Take it from one who "stole" the utility money on more than one occasion. Going off your program happens days, weeks or even months before the "DA" definition of "debting." I know I am right. The majority of the fellowship can actually be "wrong" about this. But let me remind you. This is my book. Not DA's.
I actually understand about there being a need for measurable way of determining "abstinence" for service positions etc. But my program would not work for me without a track record of spending and a spending plan. Deviation from my spending plan that puts it at negative cash flow is breaking "abstinence" for me.
When people first come to the program, it may take months for them to actually get to a positive cash flow. Tracking your progress in slowing the leaks is "positive." Tracking the times that you "sinned" again by incurring new unsecured debt is "negative."
Tomorrow I will continue about the importance of habits.
________________________________________________________________________
Shad Helmstetter is one of my favorite authors. In the story of Naci and T'naci from the book "Choices, Manage Your Choices and You Will Manage Your Life,” Naci reads a set of cards at a royal announcement ball. One of the cards reads, "Choose to be responsible for your own actions." On the other side of the card are the words, "I choose to be responsible for my own actions." and "I do not choose to be responsible for my own actions." In the dozens of times I have shared this story with students, it seems they quickly realize that accepting responsibility gives one power and control of situations while blaming other people or chance makes one always the victim of circumstances or the whim of someone else.
Is something like that easier to see when you are barely a teenager, or was I dysfunctional? I had to live half a lifetime before I could see this!
I always blamed the poor economy, my employer, the president, my spouse, the union, the bank, the credit card company, and most of all God for all of my financial troubles. Poor Richard! Just when I was catching up, I got a layoff at the construction job. The employer had raced to make a completion goal on a project to get a draw. Since the next draw was 90 days away, they would cut back until they got near the next draw so that there would be less of their money out on payroll. Now it's the union's fault for not signing up more contractors that I am without a job for several weeks.
Somehow it was impossible for me to see that the overtime money I had been getting for the few weeks previous while the contractor raced to complete a draw wasn't money to spend but to save.
Dan Kiley states a principle in his book What to Do When HeWon’t Change that has a wide application in other areas. He explained that we have very little control over another person. But when we realize that we can change the things we do have control over, we can make a huge difference. (I wonder if he stole that idea from the Serenity Prayer.)
I blamed poor product design and, again, God when my car broke down. "Why does this have to happen now?" Just when I was getting ahead, too. It made me so mad!
Vowing to never use unsecured debt again when I am just starting my program will not fix the car. Seeing that the car costs $700 a year to fix and that I need to be setting that money aside every month now gives me some control of the situation. I am no longer a victim. The car repair is a "planned expense" even if I don't know ahead of time what is going to be needed next time. My truck needs a water pump. It leaks. Not really bad, especially since the thing just barely reaches operating temperature now that it is winter and the bad radiator cap puts no pressure on the system. The alternator replacement was an emergency repair. But it was not a financial emergency since I have savings set aside for such a purpose.
Telling someone they are a failure for taking care of such emergencies with credit before they have had a chance to accumulate some savings is very defeating. Helping a person to see that they will be able to turn things around by following a spending plan even though they may see some setbacks at first is encouraging. I have said it before; I will say it again. "Debting is not a sin. It's just usually a stupid thing to do."
The first habit: I choose to accept responsibility for my own actions.
The second habit: I choose to face reality and not avoid my financial situation.
Tomorrow I will discuss what it took for me to break the debt cycle.
________________________________________________________________________
I know you have heard, "Don't debt and keep coming to the meetings."
Well, I did keep coming to the meetings. There were actually a couple of people there that had some recovery from compulsive debting. But that "don't debt" thing was a killer! I would go for weeks without "debting." Then all hell would break loose. All of a sudden I needed money everywhere and there was zero in checking! What was the problem?
I had had checking accounts at Zions, First Security (now Wells Fargo), Washington Mutual AND Key Bank. This is a real hoot. I went to open up a DBA account at Key Bank a couple of months back. The customer service representative asked if I currently had an account there. "No," I said, "I want the business at a different bank than my personal account." She asked if I had had an account there previously. I said, "Yes, but it was a long time ago when we had a car loan there when they were Commercial Security Bank." The lady pulled up a file and said, "Oh, you were at Key Bank when you were in Spanish Fork." I still remembered the disasters at Zions, First Security and WAMU but I had completely forgotten about Key Bank. All of those disasters were only too happy to let me have "guaranteed" checking. I finally got things straightened out when I ended up at US Bank and America First Credit Union.
So what was the problem? I was, as I call it, "stealing the utility money." Here is how it works. You have money in the checking to pay the gas and power bills. They are due on the 20th. You write out the checks and put stamps on the envelopes and do everything except mail them. You will have another pay day before the utilities are actually due, so you spend the money a second time. It gets close to the deadline for the utilities, but all of a sudden you realize that there might not be enough money in this week's pay check to cover the utility bills. You keep the envelopes on the desk because you will mail them the day before they are due hoping you will have the next paycheck deposited before they clear.
I wrote to the e-mail list one time, "You people are truly obsessed about credit cards. I can think of a hundred and one ways to debt without using a credit card!" Do you know there was actually someone that couldn't think up enough ways on their own to debt and they e-mailed me for the list?
I kept going to the meetings. I read the literature. I would go perhaps a month or so without "debting." Then some kind of disaster would strike, $700 for a new clutch in the truck.
I read the literature. I went to meetings. At the meetings we would pass around a printed card and say what tool we would work on that week. I would say, "This week I will do abstinence and record maintenance."
I would say "record maintenance" every week. I kept going to meetings and saying, "this week I am going to work on record maintenance."
You know what? I finally said it enough times I finally believed it! And I did it! And I did it for a month! And I did it for 90 days.
I didn't want to do it. In fact, in the beginning I tried to bargain with my sponsor. "Jay, it just doesn't make sense to keep track of every penny. Why don't I set aside an allowance that I can spend each week without keeping track?" He answered, "Richard, some people work the program that way. You can work out the details with your new sponsor." I called him back in a few days and told him I had no idea where I could go for another sponsor. There was no one in the local group and he was the only one on the e-mail list I could work with. Would he please take me back?
You can say what you want about how important step study is. You can tell me that using a credit card is tantamount to murder. You might have success in your program by abstaining from incurring any new unsecured debt. None of that really worked for me. Yes, it works now! But none of it worked until after I was keeping track of every penny of income and every penny that was spent.
Abstinence was listed as the first tool of DA until August of 2005. I joked about it. "A couple of years ago we did away with solvency and now we are working the program without abstinence."
Can you believe that people were actually trying to use the tools in order like you would work the steps in order? You might laugh. But I think I was actually trying to do that. Thankfully the tools were rewritten. As you read the first paragraph of the revised tools you will see that abstinence is now the whole program. Am I so crazy if I try to teach that there is no true abstinence until we have a sponsor, we do record maintenance and we have a pressure relief group that does a pressure relief meeting with us and helps us formulate a spending plan? How can you just tell someone "don't debt?"
What broke the debting cycle for me? Record Maintenance!
Next time I will go over some ways that people do record maintenance.
___________________________________________________________________
A famous rabbi hundreds of years ago asked, "Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?" Richard sitting at his feet could have raised his hand and said, "That be me."
I have found that it is true that people will laugh at you for such a thing but only behind your back. But it is also true there are countless people out there ready to take advantage of you. Remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoon when he would do an aside to the audience about Elmer? "What a rube!" We would all laugh. Then Bugs would proceed to take advantage of Elmer Fudd. Playing back my life looking from the outside I laugh until I cry.
So how do we calculate the cost? Wouldn't we need to know how much similar towers went for? Wouldn't we need to have an idea of what our "cash flow" (money in and out) would be while we were building the thing?
Hundreds of years ago, people noticed that a series of pictures of an object when viewed would have an appearance of motion of the object. Photography began in the first half of the 19th century. George Eastman made a leap forward when he brought out film in a roll. Thomas Edison was a great innovator. He did not invent the camera. That had been discovered centuries earlier. He did not invent rolled film. But he is the one that put "motion" with the word "picture."
I needed do the same process with my financial life. A "picture" at any one time is very important especially if you need to know what your balance at the bank is. Looking at your bank balance on the same day of every month tells a great deal more. While looking at my monthly bank statements in putting my financial past back together to be able to do my back taxes, I was able to notice some things I knew in the back of my mind but had chosen to ignore. The most expensive time of the year (Christmas time) just happened to correspond with the time that I had a drop in income! I was able to picture in my mind a couple of sine waves out of phase with each other like an oscilloscope reading of a three phase electrical source. I was at a positive "voltage" in late summer and at a negative "voltage" early in the winter.
It is important that a person be able to "see" this in her own financial life. And I have found that we each need to build that picture in an individual way that makes sense to us even if it is complete Greek to our pressure relief group. It seems to be a process but with moments or flashes of inspiration. But it does seem to me that everyone needs to begin with just keeping track of all expenditures and income. Putting them into a picture that makes sense can take different forms. Some people need to put it to paper, and, yes, those ledger sheets like my grandmother used a hundred years ago to track Thompson Plumbing and Heating are still available. I am a computer geek. When Zions Bank (what an innovative bank) first made on line access available, I signed up. That way I had an electronic check register that I could ignore. Later they adopted Quicken. I "unused" Quicken for years.
When I saw what a powerful tool Excel was as Cate whipped numbers this way and that during a pressure relief meeting, I had to learn too. I spent hundreds of hours studying how to use it. When my new sponsor on the Tesoro List shared an Excel Spreadsheet with the list, I studied it and experimented with it for hours. I felt I needed to learn it so that I could do effective spending plans. It was like a complicated watch that could track the phases of the moon and do the days of the week. You could plug a number in the correct cell and half a dozen other places would recalculate. I didn't have the patience to use such a thing. Barbara shared a spread sheet at a pressure relief meeting. It was a simple thing of beauty. I put those hundreds of hours of study to work and added the self calculating formulas. But you know what? I still didn't use even the simple spreadsheet.
I had a sponsee that I helped get started with Quicken. Our local face to face group had a workshop about doing the numbers. There was a ledger person there. There was a person that passed around a printout of their Excel spreadsheet. Three of us took a few minutes each and showed what we did with Quicken. (Isn’t it unbelievable that people would lay out their financials before a group? Where else but DA? ) I was talking to my sponsee afterwards saying that I was looking into the export feature so that I could do a spending plan. He said, "Oh, there's no need. It is a report that is easy to generate, but it's called a "budget." I told him he would need to find a new sponsor because we were trading places. Actually, after kidding about it, I let him know I was serious and humbly asked.
This does not need to be as complicated as you might think after reading my rambling on. In fact, it needs to be simple enough that you can do it every day. When I first started, I downloaded data at least twice a week. Now I download data only about twice a month. It is very rare now that there is a "new" item at download and most often when there is not a match it is because I had recorded something like $47.95 and it was actually $47.96. At first, I needed to do my numbers every day. Now I might go three days without, just saving receipts or the record on my PDA. If I go longer than that, I get this uneasy feeling. This uneasy feeling increases as the time span increases. One day I realized that that icky feeling that I was beginning to experience was what I lived with ALL the time before DA.
As much as I dislike doing my numbers I hate not having them done more. If I need to be addictive / compulsive, let it be about keeping my numbers.
Next, is there a "spiritual" component to keeping your numbers?
_______________________________________________________________________
"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." (From chapter 5, How It Works, AA Big Book)
I keep wondering about that part "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." I have a tracking category I call "fast food" and I also have a category I call "groceries." If I buy a small bag of Cheetos and a 32 oz. drink at 7-eleven for lunch, it gets tracked as fast food. But I reason to myself in the evening that a 2 liter bottle of soda and a 14 oz. bag of chips should be groceries. Who else cares? At two dollars for a can of chili and a dollar for a box of mac and cheese, if I am honest with myself, 7-eleven is no grocery store. It seems like such a trivial thing, but it is the whole essence of this program. The only one I need to answer to is God. How I track that stuff might not really be important, but being honest is. Honesty is what everything else about this program is founded on.
The time spent doing the numbers is a great time to reflect on my blessings and offer thanks for assistance in making correct choices during the day. It is also a good time to ask for help in areas that are troubling to me.
I have heard similar sentiments expressed during open shares at Chat Meetings and face to face meetings.
A good friend in the program expresses herself this way. "Doing my numbers makes me feel clean."
I find that if I am avoiding my numbers, it is because I don't want to look God in the eye. When I am in that state of mind I don't want to ask for His help either.
So, if I am not doing my numbers does that put me at less than 11 or am I way back down the line to less than 3 (see the 12 steps).
Tomorrow I will look at why we need to do a Pressure Relief Meeting before we really take on that abstinence thing.
_______________________________________________________________________
Most people come to a Pressure Relief
Meeting in holey underwear and a car worth less than the high interest loan on
it. I never ask the question about the
underwear, honest. A guy would never do
that even to another guy. And the gals
don't ask the guys that question maybe because they are afraid the answer would
be, "I don't wear any." But
gals, if your records show no spending in the clothing category, the other gal
in the meeting is going to ask if perhaps there should be some money allocated
in the spending plan for some clothing.
I usually ask the questions about the car, etc. (I was going to work a
I hope I didn't scare anyone off the PRM. The people at your pressure relief meeting will not tell you what to do. What they will do is keep asking questions until you start coming up with an action plan of your own. It is really strange how we really knew the answers to our problems all along, but we were unable to see them. Often a problem just needs some eyes looking at it from a different angle.
In my own case, the problem wasn't really in the unsecured debt. That had all come from just taking care of normal living expenses. The problem was with "secured" debt. Somehow, in DA approved literature, secured debt is virtually ignored. Every time we commit future funds for something, we limit our options. And often these contracts are difficult to change immediately. We might be in a house with a larger payment than we can now afford. It might be the wrong time of year to sell a boat. Maybe it will take a while to find a buyer for our time share condo. By the time we are forced to the decision we were avoiding, our cash reserves are completely gone. To tell a person "don't debt" at this point is not very helpful. Cutting up credit cards is minor surgery to the cutting that most of us need to do. I know this scenario does not fit all. There are people out there that have used unsecured debt to just fill their lives with stuff. But my point is that there is no way of knowing where we need to cut until we have really analyzed the situation.
For those addicted to spending, often just the fact they are keeping track will affect their spending habits. I cite again the example of my 7-eleven story. Maybe telling this person "don't debt" at their first meeting will do the trick. What do you think?
_____________________________________________________________________
It is so incongruent that someone that frets over spending a few dollars for underwear (which they definitely need) can go shopping for an automobile (which they end up committing 72 months of payments to) and make a snap decision on the purchase. This same person can use credit to go to a fancy restaurant and then live on what ever is in the cupboard because there is not enough money to go grocery shopping until the next payday.
The installer was just finishing up putting in the new carpet in my daughter's room. He had to run a 100' cord over to the neighbors to use his seaming iron because the city was shutting off our electricity at that same time.
My little brother wanted a unicycle. He became quite good at it and was invited to join The Cycling Hujos. Hugh and Joe coached him in juggling and he became good at that also. He could do four balls easily and did five at a time for short periods. People can be doing something similar with monthly payments. But they keep adding one more payment and they keep juggling higher and higher and it takes more effort and concentration as they do so. Ultimately things go awry. You might be able to catch some of the balls and hold them but the rest go bouncing away. Maybe someone helps you by picking one up for you, and you continue again with a number you can comfortably maintain until you get tired of juggling and have to stop, OR everything comes crashing down and you don't catch any of your balls.
Now all of those "balls" might be "secured," and so, by definition, you are abstinent. I think we can all agree that at this point when you bounce a check at the grocery store you have debted. To suggest that this person stop using checks does little to address the real problem. To tell this person "don't debt" is setting them up to fail. Letting them track their numbers without consciously avoiding debt gives them the success of tracking their numbers. As a person's awareness increases, they will be doing plenty of that negative self talk about their situation without any outside help. From experience I know that most people are not ready to stop "juggling" right away. They are too concerned about their credit rating. A bad credit rating is the stick that collections has been beating them with. "If you don't take care of this bill, it will ruin your credit and you won't be able to borrow any money." I believe it takes the awareness of how dire the circumstances are to get them past the fear of what in actuality is a fait accompli, a bad credit rating.
If there is some way that the minimum payments can be made while some restructuring is done, I believe that it is in a person's best interest to do that. It is always best to have as many options as possible. To change to less expensive housing, change the car you drive, change your insurance, or get different employment is easier to do if your are catching these balls and they are not already on the floor.
Cash Flow: you need more cash flowing in than you have flowing out. I feel that the method of payment matters little as long as you follow that simple rule: Spend less than you make.
You will hear in these rooms: "Don't use checks." "Only use cash." "The envelopes saved me and I will use envelopes for the rest of my life." "Close all your credit card accounts." But what I believe is that the method of payment doesn't really matter. What does matter is your outgo must be less than your income.
I think I might have an addictive, compulsive personality. There are ways that this can actually work in my favor. To have it work in my favor, I need to have the right habits.
Awareness is one of the tools of DA. Avoidance is the opposite of using this tool. If there is one thing I need to be compulsive about, it is tracking my numbers. Not tracking my numbers is reverting to my old habits.
Whatever habits we carry into our program must be analyzed. What works for someone else may be exactly the opposite of what we need to do. What ever you are doing now needs to change. If you are using cash, you might need to be using only checks for everything. If you are having your mortgage automatically transferred from your bank account, you may need to change that even if it means an additional charge of a quarter of a percent. I had just about every monthly payment set up on an automatic debit in my checking account. I had to stop every one of those. It was years before I could again use the convenient method of automatic debits. I now am adding more of this sort of thing, but I am actually showing the debit in my records a week to fourteen days ahead of the actual transfer. I have my paychecks automatically deposited into my bank account, but I don't record it as done until the day after (when funds are available).
I rarely have cash. It is still like poison to me. It seems to vanish without a trace. The envelopes would never work for me (at least I don't think they would). I would hope that I could drain one envelope without going on to the next one even though it was labeled for something else. And maybe I could now. I think I will stick with what is working for me rather than try something that works for someone else.
Credit cards were never really a problem for me. I used checks without keeping track of what was in my account (or what wasn't in my account). I had $7000 on a credit card that was tied to my checking account without ever taking it out of a drawer at home.
I have heard people say they are unable to use debit cards since they had so much trouble with credit cards and they tend to use them in the same way. I believe it. And I commend them for replacing an old habit that wasn't working with a new one that does. I use a debit card for nearly everything I do. When the checker asks, "debit or credit," I always answer, "credit." I sign the ticket instead of using my pin and they don't ask if I would like any cash back. There are times I need cash, and it is scary to use the pin and get the twenty dollars back. "Richard, you need to keep track of where all this goes," I warn myself.
You will find what works for you. But whatever it is, it must be completely different than what you have been doing up until this point! It might be the opposite method from what your sponsor uses, but it is so important that it is the OPPOSITE of what YOU have been doing. There needs to be a “disconnect” from the old way of doing things. This is the only way that your money will be managed instead of mismanaged or unmanaged. You will need to consciously "be there" during every financial transaction.
New habits can be established which later you can put on "automatic pilot." In fact, these new healthy practices must become habits. It is so important in the beginning to get things right. I watch kids work with a program called Typing Tutor. There are times that I have to pull a kid off of working on their typing and give them a small research exercise on the Internet. "I want you to remember years from now that Richard made you quit learning typing the incorrect way. I want you to remember that I was not a party to your setting yourself up for failure. You cannot play any of the typing games until I see you are typing really slowly the right way. You are going to have to spend days unlearning what you have been doing." There is a teacher down the hall that is at nearly pro status in golf. I know he would rather work with someone that had never played than someone who wanted just a few pointers.
A few days ago, I briefly mentioned that there is a spiritual component to keeping your numbers. Tomorrow I will try to explain why it doesn't work to fix what is wrong with us on the inside before we deal with our debting. It does seem logical that fixing the broken part inside would come before an outward change.
___________________________________________________________________
Hebrews 10:35. Do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord, no matter what happens. (NLT)
Hebrews 11:1. What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. (NLT)
Faith is a sure confidence of things which are hoped for, and a certainty of things which are not seen. (Tyndale 1525, spelling modernized)
There has long been a debate whether a person is saved by faith or works. I'll side with Paul in this debate. A person is saved by faith. But as you study Hebrews chapter 11, every one of the examples of faith shows action!
James lays this right on the line for those that may have misunderstood Paul.
James 2:14-18 Dear brothers and sisters, what's the use of saying you have faith if you don't prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can't save anyone. Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, and you say, "Well, good-bye and God bless you, stay warm and eat well" -- but then you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all -- it is dead and useless.
Now someone may argue, "Some people have faith; others have good deeds." I say, "I can't see your faith if you don't have good deeds, but I will show you my faith through my good deeds." (NLT)
"And thus, if you will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life."
"But if you will nourish the word, yea, nourish the
tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with
great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it
shall take root: and behold is shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting
life." (
I see this as a true principle when dealing with compulsive debting. Waiting until we are completely repaired by God before we begin our program is completely counter to the teaching of Paul, James and Alma.
We exercise just a particle of faith that this program works by beginning to write down all our numbers. It isn't important for us to understand the whole program at the beginning. Just the smallest particle of hope might be all we can muster. Keeping track of our numbers helps that seed to grow. It grows even more as we experience a Pressure Relief Meeting.
So what does this have to do with working the steps? You might work the tools for a while without doing the steps, but I have never known someone to be successful at finding recovery through the steps without using the tools. "So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all -- it is dead and useless."
______________________________________________________________________
We have found the following actions essential to our recovery." (Forward to the "old" tools)
<< Chaque Action est une Victoire ! >> http://www.debiteursanonymes.org
There have been times when I was depressed to the point that getting out of bed at all was a terrible chore. I was blessed to have a job during perhaps my lowest time. It was the only thing that kept me functioning. The job necessitated getting out into the fresh air and sun light and actually being around other people.
I find that when I am having trouble overcoming inertia in a large task, it is best for me to find the smallest and easiest part of it and tell myself I only need to do that one small part. I have learned that once I am in a job it doesn't seem so overwhelming. A have heard this method called the Sliced Salami Method. You may think it's a bunch of bologna. But I know it works for me.
When I was in the depths of depression, my estranged wife made an appointment for me with a doctor. He prescribed lithium salts and an unnamed drug starting with Z. I read the contraindications for the cheap drug and realized that I couldn't use it. I worked in the sun and heat. And I did sweat (a lot). The contraindications on the expensive drug mentioned a side effect of diminished sex drive. Well, there was no problem there, who would notice? I took the expensive drug for several months. I did not feel depressed.
"Richard, where would you like to go out to eat?" "I don't care," I would answer. "What movie would you like to see, Richard?" "I don't care." I did finally notice that although I did not feel depressed it was most likely because I didn't care! By this time I had a stack of unopened mail.
I stopped the expensive drug. Now I did care. But still weeks went by with me unable to do anything but add to the pile of unopened mail.
What worked? Just the smallest of actions worked. One step at a time worked. I sorted the mail. I had several neat little stacks four or five or six envelopes tall. I couldn't open any. The next day, I arranged them chronologically with the newest one on top. I still couldn't open any. The next day I opened one. I realized that there was only one in each stack I needed to open, the most recent one. All the others ended up in the trash. They were ancient history I couldn't do anything about.
I realized that I felt depressed again, but it was almost welcome because I cared. As bad as things were (and they were bad) they were not as bad as I had imagined.
Each action is a victory! Even if that victory is only taking out the trash or getting the laundry done. What I have found true for me is that once I am in motion I can often accomplish more than I had set out to do at the beginning.
Maybe tomorrow I will go into the heavy phone syndrome.
___________________________________________________________________
The Heavy Phone Syndrome is akin to Unopenable Mail.
If you are in DA, you know what it is like to have a creditor attempting to make contact with you every day about a late payment. You talk to them civilly, explaining the complications which make it impossible to make a payment before a certain date. They counter that they can take a post dated check over the phone. You can explain to them that you no longer make out checks until you have money already deposited in an account to cover the amount. You continue to "play that sound bite" over and over until they tire and realize that they need to move on to the next call to make goal. The very next day you have the same people call again and you go through the whole process again. You ask, "Don't you have a record of my statement yesterday that I will pay this on such and such dates?" "Oh yes," they say, "but we can take a post dated check over the phone today and bring your account current."
If you are willing to play this game every day, you can "not incur any new debt" on your checking account. If you play the game their way, you subject yourself to possibilities of worse to happen when the expected payment for contract work or a settlement check does not arrive.
There came a point that I had to contact certain creditors in writing and notify them they could no longer contact me by phone. The immediate response was to send it to collections and then those people called me daily until I sent them the same legal document that stopped the calls. The collection people's immediate response was to threaten to file a document with the court.
I continued to deal only on a written basis with the attorney (another secretary at the collection agency and no real attorney involvement) by mail. And contact was only to fulfill legal requirements, giving as little information as possible and delaying as long as possible. I did continue making payments to the original creditor at the rate that I had promised. I also combated the Heavy Phone Syndrome by practicing lifting it a little higher each day. I was finally able to dial a number. I eventually got to the point that I could wait through the "on hold music" and talk to someone. They were actually very nice. After the debt was finally paid, I was able to find out, using the phone, how to have them clear things with the collection people.
The important thing to remember is that we need to stay in contact with our creditors. They have information that is very important to us. The phone is a very useful tool to do that. But this needs to be on your time schedule and when you are prepared. Those calls initiated by your creditor are at the times you are emotionally vulnerable and when you do not have all your numbers in front of you. When you call, remember that you are in control. If things are going awry, you need to say, "I can see that I need to call back at a later time when I have some more information and when I will have the right questions to ask you." You then give a date you will call back and then hang up.
When you are called by a creditor, you have the choice to talk to them or not talk to them. If it is a 30 day late, and you were just at a temporary trouble point, it may be best to talk to them. I have generally found that to be the case. The thing with which I had the most trouble was giving promises without really knowing what my situation was. If you are taking the call while traveling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour, tell them. Ask them to call back at a certain hour and day. Or better yet, promise to call when you get home and do it. But if you are being harassed by calls from people that are programmed to make threats and don't listen to you, take the steps necessary to stop the calls.
Being proactive is a difficult habit to begin. But overcoming the Heavy Phone Syndrome and calling them before they call you works wonders. I have had creditors offer to let me skip a payment while keeping the loan current. I was able to renegotiate my truck loan to a lower payment and a lower interest rate. Why were they willing to do this? Perhaps the biggest reason is it will ultimately mean a higher interest amount. They keep me as a customer for longer. I was willing to do it because it helped me get a positive cash flow which helped me get out of debt.
I am not sure what form more about this will take, perhaps an HTML script that you click on an "if yes" button or an "if no" button to move to the next place. That will be fun to build. I know there are "comic" ones on the Internet but we need a "for real" one.
For now, remember that it is better to call them early than to have them call you often.
__________________________________________________________________
Masonry bonded with wooden beams is not loosened by an earthquake;
Neither is a resolve constructed with careful deliberation shaken in a moment of fear.
A resolve that is backed by prudent understanding is like the polished surface of a smooth wall.
Small stones lying on an open height will not remain when the wind blows;
Neither can a timid resolve based on foolish plans withstand fear of any kind.
(The New American Bible)
My financial life had so little planning. Now as I make financial plans, I take into consideration consequences that in the past I rarely looked at ahead of time. If a resolve is well constructed as described above, rarely does one need to make great changes on the fly.
I need cataract surgery. It might have been possible to postpone the surgery for another year until I was out of debt. I have elected to not accelerate my debt repayment, but instead save up money for the operation. I will have enough money saved up for it by May.
In doing the numbers, I plan to go against DA principles by exchanging a secured loan for unsecured debt. Instead of paying cash for the operation, I plan on using the one year interest free financing they make available. I will then use the money I have saved to retire a secured car loan that is at 20% interest. It will be a great cash flow improvement too. A payment of $75 will replace one of $223. This additional positive cash flow is money that can be used to accelerate the retirement of my alimony debt. The retirement of both the car loan and the alimony will make it possible to then put more in savings for repayment of the eye operation. I know I will get really nervous at the eleven month mark and pay off the one year free interest because it really isn't free unless you pay it off; it is only deferred and the deferred rate is over 20%. The secured note would run another 14 months. I can give the exact dollar amount of the savings. Savings would also include the difference of carrying full coverage and just liability insurance on the vehicle. This is not the DA way, exchanging a secured debt for a non-secured debt. But I believe it is the smart way.
Was / Am I addicted to unsecured debt? Not per se. I think I am still addicted to spending money I don't have yet. That can take the form of oppressive secured debt too.
What is the only thing that would prevent me from doing
this? I will need to talk this over with
the local group. If they pull the GSR
position from me, it would mean not going to
I do not actively preach "Cash Flow" over the DA line of "no new unsecured debt." But I will not make a secret of it. I will be open with the local group and with you. I don't see myself at cross purposes with DA. I believe now more than ever that debt is destroying our individual lives, our families and our nation.
__________________________________________________________________
The Worry Cycle is very common with those coming to DA.
You continually are distracted from what you should be doing or what you want to be doing by thoughts of terrible things about to happen because of your financial troubles. You find it difficult to concentrate on your assignments at work. When someone asks if you are feeling alright, you answer, "Oh. Yes, I'm fine. I was just thinking about something." You can't really share what is wrong. You would be embarrassed. And even if you consider sharing about what is troubling you, you can't really define what it is. There are a number of things that keep spinning around in your head.
You are always tired, so you increase your dose of caffeine. You might take an unscheduled nap and wake up even more tired. You are totally weary when you go to bed but only sleep for a few hours when you are again awake with thoughts spinning in your head. You can't seem to get any of these ideas to lie down in a straight line. It is like a tangle of mating snakes all wrapped up in a ball. Separating one thing from the mass is impossible and as you follow one idea it crosses another one so that you are following another line until again you switch to another idea. You are never able to complete anything. Once you think you have something figured out, you are distracted with another aspect of the situation and are unable to recall the solution you had in mind. You start to do something and suddenly you remember something else that needed to be done right away; you break off in mid task of an important item to handle yet another emergency.
All of this takes a physical toll. You don't exercise because you don't have time. There is just so much to do you can't remember it all. You are not hungry at meal times and couldn't be bothered to take the time anyway. But later you are experiencing the familiar fuzzy feeling and know you must eat. So you pick up what ever is quick and handy. And there you are munching away while trying to sort through everything spinning around in your head and you don't even notice you are no longer hunger as you continue to look for something else to eat.
You might go days without eating at all. You have days where all you do is eat. You don't know when to sleep. You can only sleep a couple of restless hours at night and then fall asleep at inopportune times during the day.
You will find that your clothes no longer fit. If you are normally skinny your clothes now just drape around your haggard frame. If you normally tend to carry a few extra pounds, you find you are ballooning out. This just seems to add to the list of things to worry about.
There is a simple solution! It is one that many have discovered independently. It may take a variety of forms. And while it may not be a cure for chronic depression, recovery cannot take place without it.
My therapist told me:
To restrict the use of caffeine then do away with it entirely,
Get some non work related physical activity,
Eat only at regular meals and to not skip breakfast,
And (most importantly) to start a Worry Book.
I was to schedule an hour during the week that I could devote to worrying. It was to be for a full hour. He said he thought I might cheat on this and quit early. He said that I was to time myself to make sure it was for the full amount of time. I was to postpone all worrying during the week until that one hour. I was to have a notebook and a pen with me during the "worry hour" and I was to just write whatever came to mind. He explained that I must tell myself whenever I started to worry, "I will deal with that at the scheduled time."
I did cut back on the caffeine, at least a little bit. I got up just a few minutes earlier and had something to eat in the mornings. But it was very difficult to postpone the worry. I would wake up in the middle of the night and then tell myself for what seemed hours, “I will deal with that Sunday afternoon."
Sunday came around and finally the Worry Hour. I sat there and wrote for a solid ten minutes! The rest of the hour dragged by! What I had spent hours on only took ten minutes? It was so frustrating! I knew there was a lot in there, but I couldn't find that tangled mess. What did begin to emerge were several concrete problems. Once they were down on paper, some seemed downright silly. Stuff that I had no way of knowing if it would really happen. Other things had palpable danger, but being able to foresee such things made it possible to minimize the damage that might happen.
As I reported back about my experience, I was encouraged to continue with it.
More worries did emerge as the weeks went by, but mostly what happened is I was ending up with a lot of "to do lists." As I worked on those items, the times that I would wake up at night decreased. When I did wake up, I would remember an item on the "to do list" that dealt with it and then just plan to that the next day.