Stop Being Poor in 2024

Welcome my friends, to 2024. Perhaps I was being a bit ambitious to imply in the title that you could stop being poor in just one year. The truth is that it usually takes 2-3 years of good decisions to escape the poverty cycle (or the “I make too much to be this poor” cycle.)

“LIES” you might say.

And to that I say, you can take longer if you want. I write this from the privileged place of having seen it done too often. A homeless man gets his mind right, gets housing, holds a job, gets his own place, etc. College grad gets her mind right, plugs the holes in her spending, implements some wise steps, can now go on vacation without using credit, comes home and still has money. It’s wild. 

Change Your Financial Timeline. 

How quickly you want to make money plays a substantial role in how much money you have. 

Confession time. While I was in the process of getting my mind right, I became convinced that I should play the lottery. You know, just in case…it could be me…God wants to bless me…I’d do so much good with the money. And so on and so forth. 

All of these were lies, temptations to throw me off the road to recovery. I managed to break free after wasting $70 over the course of a few weeks. It was $20 here, $10 there, $2 everywhere until finally I fought the good fight, sitting in my car until I overcame the urge/need. 

Don’t accept the lie. Extend your timeline a few years and the pull of easy money will lose its power over you. 

Let 2024 be the start of good decisions. You don’t need a treat, you are not a dog. So in month 5 when you feel like you have been doing well and deserve to treat yourself…don’t. Keep doing well and finish well. 

Here is one practical thing you can do to begin. Find one small debt that you have to pay and pay it. It may be $20 to a friend. Pay it. That friend may have said you don’t have to pay them back and you are good. Just pay it back. It may be a $200 balance on a credit card, just pay it. Once it is paid, here is the thing…don’t spend it it again. There is a trend in social media these days called “girl math” or “mom math”, or “kid math”, and so on. There is another kind of math that the impoverished use, and it’s called broke people math. Spending money on a credit card because you now have available credit is broke people math. Recognize when you are using broke people math and run like the dickens in the opposite direction. 

Here is a little character booster shortcut that will help you escape poordom faster. Think of all the people you owe money and calculate how much you owe them. Even if they gave it to you out of the kindness of their heart, add them to the list. It could be your mom who slipped you a hundred because you were hurting or couldn’t afford diapers or chicken nuggets at Chicken World. The point is that they gave you money because you were in need and that need created a draw on their love/duty and they gave to you something that belonged to them. When you go to that person and say “I remember when abc and you gave me xyz dollars. Thank you. Here’s the money back and I want you to know that I appreciate you for being there when I needed you.”

Let me tell you this, friend. If you do this a few times, it changes you for real somewhere deep inside. You start to become a giver rather than a taker. You become the person who is able to give to someone in need rather than being the one in need. This type of action is an accelerator on the path the financial freedom. It fundamentally changes the way that you think. The bank doesn’t care about you and neither does Mastercard or Visa. They aren’t trying to help you win with those points and deals that they offer. You want to know who does care about you? Perhaps its that friend you stayed with for six months and don’t really talk to anymore. Or, perhaps it’s your annoying dad who doesn’t understand boundaries. Pay them back for something/anything.

Stop being poor in 2024.

Love you guys,