Next Chapter New Life

Debt.  It is today’s form of slavery; it is indifferent of race, gender, religion.  In short, debt is ubiquitous.  It does not have to be. Being in debt applies an invisible pressure to all of us to keep our jobs just to make ends meet, even if we do not like our jobs, this pressure is proportional to the amount of debt we have.  We rope ourselves into believing we love our jobs, when really what we love is the instant gratification that our debt has brought into our lives… Cable TV, smart cell phones, laptops, Blu-ray players and high definition big screen flat panel displays, BMW’s, RV’s, oversized or just over priced homes.  Copious amounts of food, designer clothing, or just copious amounts of cheaply made designer knock-offs, then there are the subscription services online game accounts, wall street journal, magazine, etc and this all adds up to what it costs us on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis.  We might think in order to maintain our standard of living we must keep our jobs, we must get promoted, we must not get fired, and these thoughts turn us away, no, shackle us from our true passions in life.  We may not think about what we would love to do, or we may only think of it in terms of “when I retire, I will…” or we just think it is not possible to do what we love and make a living at it.  You can keep on thinking those ways and you would not be wrong, in your own mind.  Or, you can realize that I am here writing this article because I found out how to break these bonds. Like myself, you can find freedom to do what we love in a methodical process that I have proven works. The nuts and bolts sound easy but after thinking hard about it you may want to keep the shackles of debt and misery because it is easier to blame the economy or other external factor than to take personal responsibility for one’s own responses to the situation they find themselves.   If you want to be truly empowered then you must change the fundamental belief system behind your habits to change your behaviors which will in turn change your life. Nuts & Bolts: 1)    Identify what you really need to spend to survive, just survive.  (this does not include debt payments) 2)    Identify your total debt. 3)    Identify your monthly minimum debt payments. 4)    Pay down your debt beginning with highest interest rate debt first. 5)    Once one debt is paid off then roll the entire amount you paid monthly to get it paid off to the next highest rate.  Saving your mortgage for last. 6)    Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you only have a mortgage payment left. 7)    Now prepay your mortgage principle. I broke the process I followed down for you to its most elementary process.  When I got to step 7 in 2005, I made a plan to prepay my 30 year mortgage (at the time 7 years into it) in the next 3 years not believing that I could even do it in three years.  But what I found when tracking the principal was that I could and did complete my mortgage payoff in 2.5 years.  This simple approach requires one to get crystal clear on one’s priorities and find substitutions for forms of instant gratification.  In essence you will trade temporary instant gratification for your freedom to do for a living what you are passionate about.  Most people would really love to do something else for pay to make a living than what they are doing today.  But they limit themselves with excuses.  There are many good reasons why an engineer cannot become a fulltime profession ski instructor today.  But none of the reasons are valid for preventing such a career transition from being mapped out and executed.  The reasons become barriers to entry and each barrier is a problem to which a solution can be engineered! If you do not know how to engineer your future or your career change, then consider seeking a career coach to assist you in the adventure of your lifetime.  Do you not deserve to do what you love? Mark Autry was born and raised in the Portland Oregon area, graduated United States Naval Academy in 1989, and served in the first gulf war as a naval officer in both naval aviation and surface warfare communities.  Mark returned home from the Navy in 1994 and began work at Intel in Hillsboro, OR.  He moved to Olympia WA in 1996 to work out of the Intel Dupont site in various Software Engineering roles, Program Management and currently as a Technical Marketing Engineer supporting Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processors.  Mark is a part-time ski instructor at Crystal Mountain and PSIA level 2 certified.