“I want to get out of debt so I can help others. What’s the best way to do that?”
I’m not sure exactly what you do now to serve; you may already help others and you want to help MORE, but you don’t have to be out of debt to help others. 💯 Helping others isn’t always about money. It can be time, you can run a food drive for a homeless shelter, you can run a gifting group. There’s just a ton of things you can do that don’t cost anything at all.
I don’t think that God expects you to help where you’re not able to. We can help according to what we have. With that said, we should desire to get out of debt, spend God’s money that He gives us to steward properly, for many reasons, one being to be able to help and serve others like you mentioned.
Debt is like having a monkey on your back. It’s horrible! You definitely don’t want to be in debt. The Bible says we are a slave to the lender (Proverbs 22:7), and it’s so true.
It’s a great desire that you want to get out of debt, but don’t limit yourself to the heaven rewards you could be receiving for good works you do NOW…while in debt. 😊
With that said, the best way to get out of debt is to live beneath your means. That may mean selling some furniture or kids toys you don’t need and put all that money on debt. Getting a smaller house, moving, if you’re able to, while you get out of debt. But you want to have a good $500-$1,000/month left over in income that’s not spent, in order to put on debt.
Getting there can be difficult, but not impossible. Start with a goal of having $100/month left over, then $300/month, then $500/month and so on. Just keep climbing and trying to improve your finances.
Another thing you can do is transfer debt. Maybe you can take out a loan or increase another one that has a smaller interest rate and close out 3 bills with higher interest rates, transferring them over. Having the lowest interest rate you can is always a good idea.
Definitely don’t pay for anything. Here’s a great post to check out that will really help. Join a gifting group to get things free. If you don’t have a good Facebook group in your area, start one. You can glean what your needs are and gift everything else. Close out all unnecessary bills. Take a look at your automatic payments. Are there any that you don’t need?
Just try to do whatever you can to get that cushion to pay on debt. Make it a goal to make extra payments on your debt each month. There’s a lot of saving money posts on this site, definitely check them out. Look at ways to save money (build $1k in savings before you start paying on any debt, because things always come up and you want to be prepared), then look at ways to make money. Start with saving money and then move into making more money.
You should be able to slowly start climbing out of debt as you begin to do these things.