By Ryan J. Taylor
Turing debt into wealth is not complicated and it can be done is a little as a few years if you have the patience and discipline to stick to your plan.
The first step to turning debt into wealth is to determine exactly how much money you have coming in, and how much you have going out. In other words, what does your personal cash flow statement look like? If you have more money going out than you have coming in, then one of two things need to occur (or both): increase your income, reduce your expenses.
The next step is to review your spending history over the past few months and identify areas that you can reduce or eliminate expenses. This step should be taken even if your personal cash flow statement is positive and you have money leftover after all of your expense. By doing this, you can turbo charge your debt pay down process and get on the road to wealth sooner.
Depending how motivated you are to turn debt into wealth, you may consider things like temporarily cutting off the cable, riding your bike to work and brining a bagged lunch, canceling your magazine subscriptions. All of these areas that you can find small savings will quickly add up to large amounts of money that you can apply to paying off your debt. Remember, this is just a temporary solution to get you to the next level, which is to reach your financial goals by becoming wealthy.
It is a good idea to also focus on ways to increase your income. Not only can this help you pay off your credit cards faster, but once you are out of debt you can apply that extra income to your investment fund and become wealthy in twice the speed.