Bible Money Matters has an entry with a few of the tips from financial guru Dave Ramsey.
Whether you’re Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Atheist, Mormon, or from another planet, a lot of the tips that Dave Ramsey has are great ones. The biggest hurdle to getting out of debt is the lifestyle change that needs to happen before you can start on the path to financial freedom. Or, at least on the unpaved trail to not being broke all the time. Giving up the morning trip to Starbucks can be hard. Cutting the cable TV can be difficult. But, it’s important to give it a try.
One of the things that they don’t cover in the usual financial articles is what to do when you’re slapped with an Early Termination Fee. The best way to avoid those is to simply avoid getting into a ‘service agreement’ in the first place. Be very careful with cellular phone companies because most of them will renew your 2 year ‘agreement’ for something as simple as changing your rate plan. It’s a nasty tactic, but they’re liable to do practically anything to help keep their ‘churn’ numbers down. ‘churn’ is when a customer cancels and goes to another carrier. Notice how cell contracts are now for 2 years? They used to be for 12 months only, but the industry has moved to the more restrictive 2 year plans. Watch out for those.
Same with Dish Network and DirecTV – they both have long term contracts now as well, usually 2 years. This is fairly new, and is designed to keep you paying that monthly bill. So while it may sound easy for someone to just say “Well, cancel the cell phone and the satellite TV” it’s not always that easy. Such providers have no qualms about sending you right to collections and slapping the collections on all three credit reports, so be careful.
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