Here is a fun way to start a debt elimination plan. My friend was finding it difficult to see how much debt she had in a tangible way. It was just figures on a piece of paper to her. The many debts she had were holding her back in many areas of her life.
I had this idea “eat your way out of debt” so thought I would use her as an experiment to see if it would work. I bought her some clear plastic containers from the delicatessen counter at the supermarket for around 30 cents each and a big bag of Smarties which I knew she loved. I got her to label each container with the name of each debt such as “washing machine repairs” together with the amount owing and how much the regular payment amount was. The first debt she wanted to pay off was for the repairs she had done to her washing machine. That debt was $160.00. Her weekly payment was $10.00 per week, so each smartie was worth $10.00. So $160.00 divided by $10.00 = 16 smarties, so she put 16 smarties into the plastic container for that debt and so on for all her remaining debts. It made her see that it would take 16 weeks to pay off her debt of $160.00 at $10.00 per week. Nearly a third of a year! The first time she made a payment she rewarded herself by eating one smartie. She decided to trim her grocery bill by $10.00 every week. She then added that $10.00 to her payment amount and started paying $20.00 per week. This is called a debt acceleration amount. Now she was able to eat 2 smarties each week.
She paid off the first debt in just over half the time. She started to see progress so Instead of spending the extra $20.00 per week she now had she paid that towards her next debt which she was also paying off at $10.00 per week. So now she was paying off that debt at $30.00 per week and she started eating three Smarties a week from that container. Soon that debt was gone too so she added the $30.00 a week she had been paying to the next debt so she was paying off $40.00 per week, so she could eat 4 smarties each week. By involving her children in the process they encouraged her as they wanted to help her “eat her debt” each week. My experiment worked a treat and she paid off a considerable amount of debt over a year.
If you feel you are sinking in debt – this can be a good way to visualize your debt and get rid of it as fast as you can and reward yourself at the same time.
Silbo Systems, conduct money lessons for parents together with their children in small groups. For information contact us
Here is a fun way to start a debt elimination plan. My friend was finding it difficult to see how much debt she had in a tangible way. It was just figures on a piece of paper to her. The many debts she had were holding her back in many areas of her life. 
