The Wealth Building Benefits Of Being Debt Free

By: Stuart Laing
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:15:20
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Eventually, after much personal sacrifice you’ll reach the day when you’re completely and utterly debt free. You don’t owe anything to anyone. You don’t have to earn money to support your debts, just yourself.

I hope that sounds sweet to your ears. Because that’s one of the few thoughts that will help you to survive the hard times on your journey to the land of the debt free. But to provide you with some additional motivation, I want to give you something to think about.

Two recent surveys asked people the following questions:

Question One: How much extra income would you need to feel well-off?

Now before I reveal what the results were, I want you to get some paper and write down your own figure;

I would feel well-off with an extra..........income each year.

Now for the second question!

Question Two: How much money would you require before you gave up working for a living?

Again, before I reveal all the results, write your figure down.

I would retire from work if I had a lump sum of..........

Have you written down both of your answers? Good! And now it’s time for the results. Drum roll please!

39% of people asked said that an extra $10000 of income a year would make them feel rich. That’s an extra $832 a month. Would that be enough for you?

Okay, how about this? Another 50% of people who were asked felt that they would need an extra $30000 income a year. That’s an extra $2500 a month. How about that?

The other study revealed that most people would give up work completely if they won $474000. Older workers aged 50-55 needed slightly less at an average of $416000, while people aged 40-50 claimed they would need $550000 before they would consider retiring. This figure will tend to vary with age. Older people generally don’t feel that they would need as much money before they could afford to retire comfortably.

Now of course I don’t know how old you are, but are those figures anything like the number that you’ve just written down?

Great, but what’s all this got to do with being debt free?

Well, just consider the amount of your monthly income that will no longer be swallowed up by debt repayments.

All of a sudden you’ll feel rich!

Let me give you a common example. If you had a mortgage for $240000 and perhaps $40000 of credit and storecard debts, your monthly repayments would amount to around $2500.

Each and every month!

Now if you didn’t have these debts, doesn’t that also mean that you’d have a ‘spare’ $2500 a month just drifting around, kicking its heels? And what are twelve $2500s?

I bet you wish you’d learn your two thousand five hundred times table, don’t you?

The answer is $30000.

So although your income may not have risen by as much as a brass farthing, the very act of clearing all of your debts will have ‘given’ you an extra $30000 income each year.

Is that anything like the figure that you wrote down earlier? Would that be enough to make you feel rich? It was enough for almost 90% of the people in the survey that I referred to.

But you ain’t seen nothing yet. Now for the big one!

If the money that’s no longer needed for debt repayments ($30000 a year) was saved in a suitably safe and tax efficient manner, at perhaps 6% per annum, watch what would happen.

End of Year

1) $31800
2) $65508
3) $101238
4) $139112
5) $179260
6) $221814
7) $266924
8) $314740
9) $365424
10) $419148
11) $476098
12) $536464
13) $600452
14) $668278
15) $740174

It’s amazing how fast it adds up!

In eleven years you’d have over $476000 which is more than most people said they’d need to retire.

But with one profound difference! These people answered that question on the basis that winning that amount would allow them to give up work.

But you won’t need to wait for that win that will probably never arrive. If you follow this example, it will happen. You will reach that stage. Just give it time and this will happen. You’ll be free to retire, if you choose to.

I hope you appreciate the massive difference between these two situations. It’s a lot more fun waiting for something to happen when you know it will, instead of hoping for something that’s highly unlikely.

And these figures are by no means exceptional. Many people have debts that are even larger than the one I have used in this example. Just imagine the position if you had a mortgage of $360000 and other debts of perhaps $60000!

So repay your debts, and within 11 years you are likely to be in a position where you never need to work again. If that isn’t a big enough incentive to get debt-free, I don’t know what is!

by Stuart Laing

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