Dumping debt. Not only is that the name of the lesson for week 4 of Financial Peace University, but I think it’s something many Americans wish they could do (or convince Congress to do). In order to do it though, many need to be convinced that living in debt doesn’t have to be a way of life. Dave starts with a bit of history about debt in our culture. Living with debt is actually a relatively new frame of mind that wouldn’t have been considered by many in the first half of the century. However, we’ve been so trained and marketed to that we now accept it as a way of life.

In order to change our way of thinking, Dave debunks several debt myths. I’ll cover some of my favorites here.

• If I pay it off my credit card every month, what’s the harm? The truth is that people spend more when they use a credit card (and even a debit card) than they do with cash. Why do you think almost every fast food restaurant accepts them now.
• Car payments are a way of life. I can speak from experience that this isn’t the truth. We haven’t had a car payment in probably 5 years. The wise thing to do is to purchase a reliable used car. You can find a reliable used car in just about every budget range. If you need help finding one, post in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you out. If you want to find out one way to have free cars for life, check out this page.
• Cosigning is a great way to help out a friend of family member. The reason that the bank requires a cosigner is because they don’t think the person can pay the bill on their own. They want to have an extra person to go after when the friend or family member defaults on the loan.
• You’ve got to build up your credit score. You only need a good credit score if you plan to borrow more money and go into debt.
• Debt is a financial tool. To make your money work for you, you’ve got to have some, and you won’t have much if you’re paying it all to the bank. Sure, you may have stumbled across a circumstance where it worked out to your benefit to borrow money in the past, but increased debt means increased risk in your life. They can’t take your car if you don’t have a loan on it. They can’t take your house without a mortgage. They can’t garnish your paycheck if you don’t have any credit cards or student loans.

I’ve kind of summarized my own answers to the myths, but you get the point. There are a lot more covered in the lesson.

So how can you get out of debt? It’s a lot easier than you think for most people. First, stop getting into more debt, find ways to get more money, like work more or sell stuff, and of course use the debt snowball. The debt snowball simply means paying off your debts smallest to largest, and taking what you were paying on the ones you pay off and put it against the next debt. Sure, you may think going after the one with the biggest interest rate would be best, but as Dave would say “if you were good at math, you wouldn’t be in debt in the first place.” Check out Dave’s answer to paying off the higher interest rate debt myth here.

Featured Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net