As stated in my previous post, we are almost out of debt. We were shooting for the end of March as our final date but it looks like freedom is coming a little sooner than expected. Some of you may know I have been faithfully calling the IRS Tax Offset number in anticipation of being taken off the list for people having their tax returns intercepted. Well, Monday I heard one of the best things I have heard over the phone in a long time, "Our records show that you do not currently have any debts which will threaten your tax return."
HORRAY! As soon as I found this out, I hopped on the computer to file my taxes. Turns out, with the tax return that is coming to us (within the next 7 days), we can pay the remainder of our debt off AND buy our new furniture. This will be my first time as a debt free person in my entire adult life. This got me thinking, how many Americans are actually in debt?
These statistics were disturbing.
Some facts I found interesting
The average debt of households with credit card debt was $15,799
Total U.S. Consumer debt was $2.43 Trillion
That's roughly the GDP of the entire United Kingdom.
Oh and one more statistic I found funny - Only 2% of undergraduates reported having no debt. That's probably because almost nobody can get through college on cash these days. Even if you can, the schools strongly "encourage" you to finance for college. I should know. School is the whole reason for our credit woes.
In the end, paying off debt comes down to 2 words - Self Control. If you can master control of your spending habits, your debt will slowly trickle downward. It may be exceedingly difficult, especially in the beginning but, after a while, you will begin to notice the end goal becoming ever closer every month. Keep working at it guys. It's hard but not impossible.
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