I'll never forget the day I realized that my motivation to tackle debt was as fleeting as a snowflake in a heatwave. Now, I'm peeling back the layers of that struggle and how I turned a financial flounder into a triumphant debt-free dive. It's a raw look at the highs and lows of my own financial journey, one that saw me bulldoze through $45,000 of debt and lead others to financial liberation. With candid reflections, I share the pivotal mindset shift that kept me laser-focused on the prize, proving that accountability and a concrete strategy are your allies against the paycheck-to-paycheck hustle.
Picture this: a future so bright and compelling that every dollar you pinch and every job challenge you navigate propels you towards it. That's the vision that transformed me from a skeptic into a self-development enthusiast, despite wrestling with the demands of a tough job, a divorce, and fatherhood. This episode isn't just about sharing my story; it's about igniting your own vision for financial independence, career fulfillment, and outright joy in life. I delve into how aligning your everyday decisions with your long-term dreams isn't a sprint but a marathon, one that requires clarity, motivation, and a commitment to growth. Listen in and let's craft the future you deserve, together.
I'll never forget the day I realized that my motivation to tackle debt was as fleeting as a snowflake in a heatwave. Now, I'm peeling back the layers of that struggle and how I turned a financial flounder into a triumphant debt-free dive. It's a raw look at the highs and lows of my own financial journey, one that saw me bulldoze through $45,000 of debt and lead others to financial liberation. With candid reflections, I share the pivotal mindset shift that kept me laser-focused on the prize, proving that accountability and a concrete strategy are your allies against the paycheck-to-paycheck hustle.
Picture this: a future so bright and compelling that every dollar you pinch and every job challenge you navigate propels you towards it. That's the vision that transformed me from a skeptic into a self-development enthusiast, despite wrestling with the demands of a tough job, a divorce, and fatherhood. This episode isn't just about sharing my story; it's about igniting your own vision for financial independence, career fulfillment, and outright joy in life. I delve into how aligning your everyday decisions with your long-term dreams isn't a sprint but a marathon, one that requires clarity, motivation, and a commitment to growth. Listen in and let's craft the future you deserve, together.
Have you ever felt motivated to save money and finally get out of debt, to rid yourself of financial stress, only to find that feeling completely disappear? Or maybe it just wasn't enough to really take action and put in the work? Hey, me too, and that was my story until I did this one thing that made a huge difference, and I want to share what that one thing was with you guys on this episode. And I bet if you do this, you're going to find that you're also going to get better results and you're going to be holding yourself more accountable to your financial goals and getting yourself out of debt and ending paycheck to paycheck living. Hey guys, my name is Brad Nelson and this is the debt free dad podcast, where we are helping normal, everyday people just like you take control of your finances so that you can live a happier and less stressful life, and I personally have paid off about $45,000 in debt. I've been debt free now for over 11 years outside of my mortgage, and now I have helped thousands of people over the years, saving pay off tens of millions of dollars. Now here's the thing I don't believe there is enough motivation around this idea of I want to get out of debt, or I want to save money, or I don't want to feel stressed all the time. Now these statements all kind of seem good and sound good in theory, but these statements and ideas don't really move the needle all that much when it comes to really getting motivated and wanting to take action with your personal finances. They don't prompt us, especially long term massive action. Long term, right, you may do it good for just a little while, but, man, long term you kind of get bored, you wore out and there's just not enough motivation there to keep on going. Now I know that there wasn't enough motivation for me and that's why I consistently kept falling flat on my face and getting out of debt. So today I want to share kind of this one big thing that really helped me and it's really helped thousands of other people that we have coached over the years. And the cool part about this is that you can do this too.
Speaker 1:
So first I want to take you back kind of when I started doing this stuff. You know I first started getting this idea of wanting to take control of my finances back in my late 20s. I was already kind of starting to, you know, feel a lot of the financial stress, that constant hamster wheel of living paycheck to paycheck, and I just wanted something better. You know, I finally just wanted to look at my savings account and actually have some money in it. I just wanted to have the credit card statements stop coming in the mail all the time. And, of course, like many and maybe just like you, I would get motivated, I would start taking action, I would start doing some things, only to find that that motivation didn't last. Right, and I would be eventually back to my old ways, doing the same old things, same bad choices, same behavior, same habits, and it was just kind of this on the wagon, off the wagon type thing fits and start, so to speak, right. And the reality was is when I first started doing this, there was no real sense of progress, because I would do good for a little while, I would fall off the wagon and I would basically ruin all the results I had gotten and then I get back on the wagon and the cycle would just keep repeating itself.
Speaker 1:
And also, at this time, I started doing what I called was well, let's just call it self-development work and I really wanted to improve my life and I started to just look at self-development resources that were out there. And I was actually waking up at this time of my life at 3 am In the morning. I was working a normal, you know, monday through Friday, 8 to 5 kind of job, but I was waking up at 3x at a long commute and I wanted to wake up early because I wanted to spend some time on Figuring out what the heck my life was about, where I was going. I had recently gotten divorced and had a two-year-old son and I was just, you know, my career was okay, but it wasn't the best, and I was just at this moment in my early 30s, if I just I just need to, I Just need to do some stuff different. And so I just started checking out self development resources to hopefully maybe give me some, you know, direction or point me in the Right direction of how I can start figuring things out for my life and really the direction I wanted to take it.
Speaker 1:
And so, you know, I was reading books, I was, you know, going through podcasts and classes and seminars and I kept coming across these ideas of creating what they call is a compelling future right, or Some people might call it their why, or their purpose, or some people might call it maybe the mission statement for their life. Right, and at first, immediately, you guys, I was like this, this is way too deep for me. This is like getting to that touchy-feely, like, yeah, you know, that sounds like a lot of work and man, I just I just don't know if I want to do that. But then I Started considering what does my future actually look like? It was just amazing reading some of these resources and and them asking me these questions of my Confelling future what does that look like? Where you want to be, and just having that in your mind and then just thinking through that as the days would come and the months would come, and and starting to really think about what that was going to Mean.
Speaker 1:
So I started thinking about things like my career and my future. I actually started to think about, really, what were the possibilities of running my own business, something I always wanted to do my entire life and Unfortunately I was so broke there was just no chance I was ever gonna be able to do that. But I started to think what if I could do it by taking control of my finances? Right, I thought about my finances as a whole. What could my life be like if I just had no more credit cards, had no more car payments? What can my life be like if, man, I didn't have to worry about when payday was. I have to constantly be kept, you know, checking the calendar, when those next bills were gonna be due, and what it would feel like just to have less financial stress in my life and to finally just be happy and to be content and just to be Almost at peace, so to speak, with my finances. I was I was, you know, constantly on that hamster wheel again.
Speaker 1:
I Started to think about things like my family's future, and what does that look like? I started thinking about my time. How do I spend my time now? And I tell you, I wasted a ton of time. There's so many of us that waste our a lot of our time on stupid things social media, tv things. I just don't bring any value, and I was one of those people too, and I'm still guilty of those things from time to time today, right, but I really started to consider where am I spending a lot of my time, and is that time being spent there Helping me live the life that I want to live? I started thinking about things like where I wanted to live, experiences I wanted to have and, ultimately, what is really gonna bring me some happiness in my life.
Speaker 1:
And I gotta tell you, going through this process, though, it really Helped me gain a tremendous amount of more motivation To finally get out of debt, save more money and rid myself of financial stress. More than anything else, because, by doing these activities and thinking through these, writing some of these answers down and really considering what I want my life to look like, it created that compelling future, and that compelling future looked really good. So for me now to go on this journey of getting out of debt, I was able to easily say no to more things. I was easily able to sacrifice on things that weren't pushing me to that future I wanted, and it just became this driving force and helping me get out of debt. And it took me a while to get out of debt again. It's still. It didn't make it all easy. It just kept me motivated like, hey, I'm not gonna quit until I cross that finish line.
Speaker 1:
And so I started to make that connection that, if I got my finances under control, all of these things that I'm thinking about, that I want for my future, things that I want for my son, things that I want for my family, things that I want for my career, this business man that could that be possible? Life threw me this vision of like I need to get myself out of debt, like I need to do this, I need to do this now. And that's when I started to get really motivated and really excited to do it. And from there on out, guess what? I made? Better progress, I stuck to my plan. Better, it wasn't perfect, but I stuck to my plan. More, I held myself more accountable because I really wanted to reach what that compelling future looked like for me. So, guys, what I want to share with you are just some of the things that I started to consider and again I kind of, you know, gave those away a little bit here in the story I want to share.
Speaker 1:
But how do you go about creating this compelling future for yourself? And first, you don't create a compelling future in just a few minutes or one time sitting down at your table. This took me days, weeks and even sometimes months. Don't think that you're going to have it all figured out overnight, and that's okay. But consider these things because your finances are going to have a ripple effect on your life. So the better your finances get, the better the rest of your life gets. You get to level up, so to speak, in a lot of other areas once you take control of your finances. So understand that this is going to take some time. It takes some thinking, it takes some thoughtfulness to really get it all out there. So just be patient with yourself and, yes, it's not going to be easy to consider some of these things. A lot of people ignore it, to be honest. But I can tell you, if you're willing to put in the work, man, this can really create a good vision for the rest of your life and really give you some motivation to kind of push through some of those financial challenges that you have and overcome them. So I want to give you some questions that you can consider. So here are some compelling questions to start asking yourself or considering.
Speaker 1:
If you had only six months to live, what would you do and how would you live? You know a lot of people would live a lot different if they only had six months to live. What would that look like to you? That might give you just a little different perspective If I'm spending my time on the right things right now. Can I be doing other things and can I create a future that includes those things without having to die? Right, we're all going to die at some point, but not in six months, right? That's the idea behind that question.
Speaker 1:
What would your ideal life look like? Your ideal life? What would that look like? It's a big question. Take some time with that one. Maybe consider your career. Are you happy with where you are and if not, what would you like to do? Think about that. What would you love to do or enjoy doing? Spend a lot of time working? Think about that one. What would your relationships look like? Maybe you're married, maybe you're about to be married. Maybe relationships with your relatives. Maybe brothers, sisters. Maybe you, as a parent, with your kids? What do your relationships look like if you got to take control of your finances and rid yourself of all the stress that you're dealing with? What would you be doing with your time? How would you spend your time? Now, some cool things to help you make these types of questions more visual as you begin to get your compelling future put together.
Speaker 1:
All right, now again, remember, this takes time and this certainly isn't an all-inclusive list, so I want to give you a couple of things that helped me All right. Number one Create a vision board. I can't talk about this enough and again I have to create one myself again, because the one that I had is now gone and I need a new one. But I'm a very visual person and so once I took this compelling future and my goals and I put it onto a vision board pictures and words and things that represented the life that I wanted and then I hung it up in my house and I got to look at that every day. It's pretty powerful in keeping those goals front and center in your life every single day as you stare at that thing walking in and out of that room, right? So create a vision board of what that looks like.
Speaker 1:
Just some quick books that have helped me. Look at a book called Start With why. Now, this book immediately is more geared towards business, but this really kind of harnesses this whole idea of creating this compelling future and this why. Instead of talking about what you do, well, why do you do it? Another great book by Matthew Kelly is the Rhythm of Life, one of my most favorite books. And then another book to consider, as it revolves around making changes is the Compound Effect, and this is all about making really small, tiny changes in your life. You don't have to do everything all at once, and I think this is what overwhelms a lot of people when it comes to taking control of their finances. I think they have to do everything all at the same time, and you don't. So look at the book by Darren Hardy. It's called the Compound Effect. You will absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:
So, in closing this episode out, guys, motivation doesn't last, but here's the real game changer. Long term success is all about consistency and discipline. Now the trick is you need to paint a vivid picture of what your future is going to look like and then go about the actions of making that happen. Be relentless in that pursuit, take regular, consistent action and I promise you you are going to start to see some amazing and lasting results towards your financial goals. Hey, if you're looking for some great resources on how you get started even further, go check out our free Life Without Payments Workshop. Go to debtfreedeadcom. Click on Tools in the menu at the top of the page. You'll find the free workshop there. This is going to give you all these great getting started tips on what you need to focus on if you want to end paycheck to paycheck living. Hey guys, thanks for being with us here today and we'll see you on the next episode.