Ways to be debt free: What now?

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                                                       source: http://7million7years.com

Its been awhile since I wrote something about this topic. If you haven't read the first part click here.

In my last post we talked about accepting that you are in fact buried in debt. It may sound crazy or something but as any other form of addiction acknowledging your situation is the very first step. Now the next thing one should do is to make an inventory of whatever one has. 

When I say "whatever one has" that includes your assets and your liabilities.

Do you have a car? Do you have a house or a laptop? These things are your assets. Assets are things of value that you own. 

Do you have a credit card loan, a bank loan, a mortgage, or a "utang sa 5/6" ? These things are liabilities. Liabilities are things that you owe.

List these things separately. You could have a notebook with the pages equally divided of which the first half would be your ASSETS and the second your LIABILITIES. Make it a four column page. The first would be your description or name of the asset or liability, the second is the amount related to it, the third is your plan for it, ans the last is where you can either put a tick mark to indicate if the plan for it is done or a date of which you want to achieve such. See  sample below:

Now just like the above examples you have to decide which assets of yours can go away and which one are necessity. I know this would be gory but hey remember you are buried in debt and if you don't get out of it fast the more you will be buried in the pit. Oh these is one of the secrets ... you must get out of debt fast.

On your liability section determined which one are onerous or burdensome.

Lets define onerous, courtesy of wiktionary.org

Etymology

From Latin onerosus (“burdensome”), from onus (“load”).
Pronunciation

    * (UK) IPA: /ˈəʊn.ɜː(ɹ).ʌs/ SAMPA: /"@Un.3:(r).Vs/

Adjective

onerous (comparative more onerous, superlative most onerous)

   1. burdensome; difficult; wearing; tiring

Antonyms

    * gratuitous

Related terms

    * exonerate
    * exoneration
    * onus

Why list liability in the order of burdensomeness? 

As I have said awhile ago the faster you pay your debt the better. So the faster you pay debts or loans with hefty interest the better because you save money paying the interest attached to it. So looking back at the above I guess the Php 650,000.00 bank loan at 15% per annum should be settled or paid first to avoid paying interest.

Now looking at your assets, list them down in the order of greater fair value. Sorry I never told you. Maybe your laptop cost 25,000.00 when you bought it 3 months ago but if you are to sell it  now probably you will only get 10,000.00 to 15,000.00. One has to consider an asset's fair value. 

Wikipedia has this to say about fair value:

A rational and unbiased estimate of the potential market price of a good, service, or asset, taking into account such objective factors as:

    * acquisition/production/distribution costs, replacement
      costs, or costs of close substitutes
    * actual utility at a given level of development of social
      productive capability
    * supply vs. demand

and subjective factors such as

    * risk characteristics
    * cost of and return on capital
    * individually perceived utility

What does this mean? Your assets may have a lower or higher value depending on how much is the accepted fair value at the time of sale. So what can you do to be able to sell your stuff to pay off your debts? I guess these are my only advice in regards to this matter ; first make sure people who are interested to buy see value in your asset and second make sure such are in good shape.

Looking at the two sides you might notice that you have a difference of negative Php 197,500.00

This is what we call Net Worth. To read about my post regarding Net Worth click here.

Having a negative net worth signifies that you are really buried in debt while having a break even or a positive net worth means you are able to leverage your assets and liability to the full potential. 

So what is one of the things that you should do to be debt free? 

You have to list your asset in the order of greater fair value and liabilities in the order of onerousness. Pay first your onerous debts and make sure your assets has greater value so that you can get as much from it.