Home > Personal Finance > Change from the inside out, upside down

I serve a large clientele of relocation buyers to the greater Frisco TX areas. Primary reason is job relocation. Here in the Plano and Frisco areas, we are home to major corporations such as Frito-Lay, Pepsi-Co, AT&T, EDS, Computer Associates, McAfee, Ikea, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, Ericsson, Bank of America (formerly known as Countrywide) and more. Most of these are financial and IT jobs. I have helped move many families from California, the East Coast as well as big metropolitan areas such as Seattle and Chicago.

Since most of these clients come from a higher standard of living than the greater Dallas area, many of them come with great intentions of starting their foot off in the right place. If they couldn't pay cash for their homes, they plan to come very close to it. With the sale of their homes, it is not uncommon to see these people with $100,000 to $200,000 in cash waiting to purchase a new home in the greater Frisco TX area.

When they get here and start shopping, some of the plans changed along the way. Instead of wanting to transfer the equity of their home, some make plans to pay off their credit card debts and to start fresh. VERY WELL! I'm all in support of that.

Before you know it, some credit card debts are paid off. Some did even better. All the credit card debts are completely gone.

So, how bad can this get? And why am I blogging about it?

Well, 2 or 3 years down the road, most of these people are back into credit card debts AGAIN. Their initial intentions of paying off the credit card debts did not come with a commitment to change - turn over a new leaf so to speak. Getting out of debt has more to do with behavior modification than the debt itself. MOST people fail to see that.

If getting out of debt has anything to do with finances, then we wouldn't be in the position we are in. We would have never gotten into the 18-23% in credit card interest rates.

If I had described you today, don't take my article personally. But if you want to start over, start with a changed mindset and a budget. Stick with it. Many people before you had done it, so can you! Forget about the past. Today and what you decide to do tomorrow is what that matters.

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