If you figure out a service that you could provide for someone and you charge them $30 a week that would be $120 a month. You would have to find 17 customers for your service. So what could you do for $30 a week? You could take your lawn mower and offer to mow 17 of your neighbors lawns. Granted, where would you have the time for this? That’s 2.5 lawns a day. Would you be able to do this on top of your regular job? Maybe you would have to hire someone to use your mower & pay him $15 a lawn to mow. You could have him work at the mowing & you could focus on finding new customers. 34 lawns would bring in to make $4,000 a month. Pay your helper $500 a week to mow for you. 37 lawns.

Start a very very small business. What do I mean? Do you have a talent or something that you could sell? Do you play golf very well? Could you sell lessons? Do you know piano? Could you sell lessons? $60 an hour or $30 a half hour is a fair rate to charge for lessons. You would only have to find enough clients to fill 8.5 hrs a week to make an extra $2,000 a month.

What do you do on weekends? If you work 5 days a week that’s 2 free days. In order to make an extra $2,000 a month. Could you find a job that pays $250 a day on the weekends? Could you find a 2nd job after work for 4 hrs a night plus weekends?

Perhaps you could start your own window washing business. Charging $3.50 a window. All you have to do is wash 600 windows a month. The average house has 8 windows. Finding 75 houses a month would be a lot on the average house. But targeting bigger houses with 40-50 windows & business’s who want their windows cleaned weekly professionally. Those clients will add up fast.

Perhaps you’re good at this entire “internet thing”. Could you create webpages for people? Some people charge thousands of dollars per webpage. Do you think starting out you could charge $500 an find 4 clients a month? Absolutely. Finding 1 client and making 1 webpage a month is very realistic part time after work.

What are some other ways? Did you used to be a roofer when you were younger? Did you hate the work but wouldn’t mind doing a roof a month to help make an extra $2,000 a month? Perhaps you don’t even need to do the work. Just find the work. Find out what local roofers in your area are charging if its $2 a square foot for labor. Go door to door. Pass out fliers & advertise. Offer selling your services for $3 a square foot for labor. Once you got a contract with these people. Call up the guy who charges $2 and hire him to do the roof. He will love you for it.

Now, just a word of warning. Some of these things might require licenses in your area. that’s okay. You may not need a license right off the bat. You can probably get away with doing a job or two without a license for a friend. But use that money you earned towards making sure everything is legal.

Remember! Be creative. You can figure it out.

A: There are many ways to get out of your student debts besides writing a check. Some of these steps require some pre-planning but not all of them. As you may know. It is almost impossible to discharge your sudent loan debt through bankruptcy. There still are other options left while limited these options include:

1. Military Service
Join the military & you can get all of your schooling paid for. Talk to a local recruiter in your area for further details or visit their websites.

2. Volunteer work
a. Peace Corps – Each year you serve you can get 15% knocked off your student debt up to a total of 70%
b. Americorps – You can serve 12 months and recieve a $7400 in a stipend and on top of that recieve $4725 to put towards your student debt.
c. Volunteers In Service To America(VISTA) – For 1700 hours. You can recieve $4725

3. Become a full time teacher
Due to The National Defense Education Act. Teachers in low income areas can have a great portion of their student loan debt forgiven. For your first and second year teaching you can get 15% each year of your student debt forgiven. For your third and fourth year you can get 20% each year forgiven.

4. Become a Registered Nurse
In exchange for the initial two years service commitment, you can receive 60 percent of your total loan forgiven. If you serve a 3rd year you can have another 25% knocked off. At the same time you also receive the salary and benefits they you have negotiated with your employer.

5. Become a public interest attorney
Look into the college cost reduction act of 2007. H.R.2669 Signed into law Sept 27th, 2007. Section 401 of the bill states that anyone who server in public service that has made 120 monthly payments can have the rest of their loan entirely forgiven.

So there you have it. Student Loan Forgiveness is not so easy but its also not impossible. If you know of another way to get your student loans forgiven. Leave us a comment and we’ll add it to the list. It is also important to point out again that you cannot discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. This is very important to know when you’re going to get student loans. If its a bad deal don’t just walk away but run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

The best way to get rid of your student debt is to pay it off immediately. Life without debt is always better than life with debt. Some people say “It’s so cheap there is no need to ever pay it off”. Its cheap now, wait until you lose your job and miss a payment and the interest rates goes up to 18%. This has happened to thousands of Americans. Don’t let this happen to you.

It is also important for me to point out that if you’re going to go into debt to get an education. Make sure there are jobs available for the career of your choosing. Also make sure that the jobs pay for enough money to pay back the loan. $80,000 worth of student debt for a liberal arts degree might not be the best financial move. Even if you love liberal arts. You won’t love being in debt.

List all your credit card debts. From the lowest amount owed to the highest amount owed. Basic Example:
Amount Owed – Minimum Payment – Card Name
500 – $15.00 – Credit Card A
750 – $22.50 – Credit Card B
1000 – $27.80 – Credit Card C
2500 – $62.50 – Credit Card D
5250 – 157.50 – Credit Card E

Lets pretend for the sake of simple math. These credit cards all had an interest rate of 18%.

Using the debt snowball method. You pay your minimum monthly payments each month and the debt with the lowest owed. You pay your snowball amount to it. Whatever your snowball amount is. After your first credit card is paid off. You take the $15 you would normally pay towards credit card A and apply it to help pay off credit card B. Once you pay off credit card B. You take the minimum monthly payments for A & B + the snowball amount you started with and put that towards credit card c. ETC ETC.

If you paid your minimum monthly payments + $100 a month. It would take you 35 Months to get out of debt.
If you paid your minimum monthly payments + $200 a month. It would take you 26 Months to get out of debt.
If you paid your minimum monthly payments + $300 a month. It would take you 21 months to get out of debt.

So! The magic number for getting out of debt in 18 months for $10k in credit card debt in our example is $361 a month on top of your minimum monthly payments.

I know exactly what you’re thinking! That sounds great but! I don’t have $361 extra a month. I know exactly what you’re thinking. There is absolutely no way I can come up with an extra $361 a month. Yes, there is! You can do it. but how? Making hard sacrifices. Do you need cable tv for the next 18 months? Do you need to eat out of the next 18 months? Do you need a cell phone for the next 18 months? Can you carpool to work? Can you clip coupons & lower your grocery bill 20%? Do you need to start thinking about getting overtime or a weekend job? Absolutely. If you have a talent like playing piano maybe its time to start giving lessons. You’re only $361 a month short of your goal. If that’s what you want. You can do it.

So for those who want more math! Here is the break down.

$361 paying down your debts in the order listed above.

Month 2. Credit Card A is completely paid off.
Month 4. Credit Card B is completely paid off.
Month 6. Credit Card C is completely paid off.
Month 11. Credit Card D is completely paid off.
Month 18. Credit Card E is completely paid off.

So, $361 is a huge sacrifice. After month 2. You’re going to pay off that credit card & feel so good. You’ll feel much better month 4 and by the time month 6 rolls around. You’ve got a year left and you can taste the sweet sweet victory.

What we have found out from those who take this challenge seriously and try to get out of debt in 18 months. They normally figure out a way to get out of debt sooner than 18 months. Sometimes a heater breaks. or the car breaks down and it costs money. Those who really want to get out of debt won’t be discouraged and will figure out how to make it work. During this 18 month period is also an excellent time to actually use your tax return towards paying off your credit card debt! You know all those years you said you were going to do it and never did it!? Well, this is the year to do it!

Just remember. Your actions got you into debt. Your actions and your actions alone will get you out of debt. Just think. 2 years from now you could have a few thousand in the bank & planning that dream vacation and not worry about how its going to be paid for.

Think debtors prison is illegal in the united states? You’d be incorrect. That right if you don’t pay your bills you might end you up in the big house! Rumor is this is true in about one third of all states in the country. How does this happen? If you get sued for your debts and don’t show up to court the judge will issue a warrant for your arrest. Another way that people have been arrested for is failure to make court ordered payments. The horrible thing about this is… A good portion of the people who failed to appear to court claim they never got the message they were being sued or even had a court date!

What is being done to stop this? Not much in most places but Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is fighting to stop this from happening in her state. Once the Illinois AG sorts out the mess more than likely other states will start to adopt the stance.In some areas judges have refused to issue warrants for these people because the strain the current system already face. Washington state is making the rules to notify that you’re getting sued tougher to make sure you don’t accidently end up in the slammer!

Steps to avoid going to jail.

1. Pay all your bills.
2. Show up to court if sued.
3. You must pay court ordered payments.

Current known states to have these issues.

1. Illinois
2. Indiana
3. Tennessee
4. Washington
5. Florida

*This is a incomplete state list. If you live in a state where this is happening Please leave us a comment and we’ll add your state to the list.

Groceries
Clothing
Water/Sewer
Mortgage
Car Insurance
House Insurance
Entertainment
Eating out
Fun $
Cable
Internet
Cell Phone
Visa
Mastercard
Discover
Snowball
Gas
Heating
Electricity
Property Taxes

ETC… Etc…

Take a stack of envelopes and write a category on each envelope. Decide today where every dollar for you paycheck is going each week. Then when you get paid cash your check and divide it into each category. When you need to spend money you pull it out of the envelope of that category. Only buy groceries with the grocery envelope. To help make your grocery envelope last longer fill your grocery envelope with coupons from your local newspaper. Whenever you spend a dollar from any envelope put the receipt or write on the envelope what day and how much you spent. Each week go over how much was spent out of each envelope and see if you need to cut back for the next week to make it last. Each month work at cutting back more and more and putting all that extra money into the snowball envelope to help pay down your debt. If in week #3 you’re running low on grocery money. Cut back and do your best to make it last. When you run out of money for eating out. Stop eating out for that month & next month do a better job of making it last longer.

After your first few weeks of using the envelope system you will be amazed at how much money you can save. You will start becoming very aware of where every dollar goes. It makes it very easy to think over every dollar you spend.

Perhaps its time to get a 2nd job or start a small business? Start babysitting. Whatever you decide. Don’t go out and spend $ and put it on your credit card because it makes you feel good. You’ll wish you never did once your bill arrives. You should have cut up those credit cards long enough ago anyways!

If you haven’t already started your get out of debt plan and know the exact date when you plan on getting out of debt. Now is the time to sit down and figure this out. Its never too late to start. Good luck, and don’t dis-spare. Follow your plan and you’ll make it!