Tag / debt

by Nathan Coumbe

No effect, no opinion

Everyone seems eager to tell others that what they’re doing is wrong. 

“Don’t you know that it’s better to pay the minimums on your debt and invest the rest?”

“Why are you still renting? You should have bought a house by now… You’re just throwing your money away!”

“You can’t possibly know what you’re talking about because it’s not your job.”

“You can’t marry that person—it’s totally immoral!”

Well, maybe there’s a method to the madness…

Maybe you want those payments gone so you have total control over your income.

Maybe you’re still renting because you don’t know where you want to live yet. Or you don’t have enough money to cover repairs if something major happened. Or—GASP— you want to pay cash for a house! And renting is just buying you time until you’re ready. How crazy is that?

Or maybe you know exactly what you’re talking about, and you understand THEIR point of view too. You simply don’t want to live the same way as them. 

Here’s a rule I think more of us should live by: 

Unless my behavior affects you, you don’t get to have an opinion about it.

And the magic of it? This works for everything.

If you don’t approve of gay marriage, then don’t do gay marriage yourself. But that doesn’t give you the right to dictate someone else’s lifestyle. Because their behavior doesn’t affect you.

If you want to live a debt-free lifestyle, other people don’t get to tell you you’re an idiot because “that’s just not normal.”

And if you don’t want to wear a helmet when driving on your motorcycle, you do you. Your behavior is only going to kill you…

On the other hand, you can’t smoke in a restaurant or movie theater. Because your behavior affects my health, safety, and well-being.

You can’t dump your toxic waste in our waterways… Because by definition, it’s communal—it belongs to (and affects) everyone.

And you can’t text and drive. “Well that’s just my behavior – you can’t tell me what to do.” Actually, yes I can. Because while you’re texting and driving, you might smash into me at 70 miles an hour. 

You might be fine, but I’d still be dead.

So, the next time you feel the need to tell someone how wrong they are, ask yourself:

Does their behavior affect me?

If it does, say something. 

If it doesn’t, keep your mouth shut.

(Unless they’re asking for your opinion, of course). 

by Nathan Coumbe

6 reasons why you should and should not go back to school

I wrote recently about why taking action is more important to your work and career goals than going back to school for more degrees. Today I’m going to give you 6 reasons why you should and should not go back to school.

Why Not?

  1. DON’T go back to school if you cannot afford it. No education, not even a medical or law degree is worth massive amounts of debt. You won’t make as much money as you think you will, and you may not even get the degree. Don’t go to school if you can’t afford it.
  2. DON’T go back to school if you don’t have a plan for what you want to try to do. No plan is full-proof anyway–you may change your mind halfway through and decide the field is not for you. Also, you may be able to get the knowledge and education you need without spending a fortune on a degree (which may be irrelevant by the time you finish).
  3. DON’T go back to school because you think the degree will get a job for you. It will not: your skills, abilities, projects, portfolio of work, and ability to sell yourself are the only things that will do that.

Why You Should

  1. DO go back to school if the field you’re entering is highly specialized and requires certain education or certifications, e.g., medicine, law, engineering, public school teaching or administration, etc. This also applies to those of you who wish to become higher education professors.
    • Keep in mind that the opportunities in higher education are limited. You will most likely spend years as an adjunct, competing with hundreds of other candidates who have the same credentials and publications as you, and there is no guarantee that college will be as it was when this pandemic is all said and done. Check out this video by Adam Grant on graduate education.
  2. DO go back to school because you love education and simply want to further develop yourself with an advanced degree (but only if you can pay for it. DO NOT GO INTO DEBT FOR EDUCATION).
  3. DO go to school if it is the only way to obtain the knowledge you seek. It is highly unlikely this reason is valid: with all the options available to you online, it’s easy to get an unoffical master’s degree in just about any field imaginable. It’s also easy and free to take real college classes online from Ivy League universities and other top institutions all over the country. (Click here if you want tips on how to get a useful education for almost no money. Dan Miller has another great article on the subject here.)

Learning is important. Well-educated individuals are in demand and in short supply in every industry in the United States and abroad. But well-educated does not mean letters behind your name or fancy degrees from famous colleges.

Well-educated means you have the real and practical knowledge, skills, abilities, and most importantly, the will and the desire to take initiative and execute on the work put in front of you.

You don’t have to go back to school, but you do have to continue your education.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Money matters

Money is important, whether we wish it to be or not. The keyword here is money.

Your credit score is not money – you cannot buy an amazing, limited-time offer with your credit score. You cannot use your credit score to buy a life-changing course that will help you make more money than you dreamed possible. You need money to do these things.

You need money to be able to improve yourself, your skills, your position; you need it to create, to thrive, to lower the demand your art places on your head.

Creatives, artists, writers, musicians – we, more than anyone else, need to realize the importance of money in our lives. It allows to create more art; it allows us to pay the bills so that we can create more art; it allows us to eat SO THAT WE CAN CREATE MORE ART.

Get money, not an 850 FICO score. We’ve been brainwashed that a credit score is an indicator of wealth, but it isn’t. All a credit score measures is how much interest you’ve paid to banks, how long you’ve been paying them, and how many different types debt you’ve had.

Do you know what a real measure of wealth is?

MONEY!

Money, investments, property, assets – these have been the measures of wealth for centuries now. It’s only been in the last half decade that companies decided to collect a bunch of random information about you and sell it to banks, so that the banks can make huge sums of money off of your ignorance.

Here’s another idea: how many of you have had your personal information compromised and stolen simply because credit bureaus exist? If you are reading this blog right now, if you are breathing, there is a greater than 50% chance that your personal data has been stolen by someone.

BREAK THE CYCLE. Quit thinking that a credit score means something good for anyone but banks. Money matters; wealth matters.

I’ll say this one more time: go make money so that you can create more art.

by Nathan Coumbe

Debt is killing your creativity

Are you a Creative?

Do you make something for the rest of the world to read, see, hear, or consume? Are you an artist, a musician, an actor, a writer, a blogger, photographer, videographer?

It doesn’t matter what your “art” is – you are a Creative.

I have four words to say to all of my fellow Creatives out there:

GET. OUT. OF. DEBT.

It doesn’t matter if you have a little debt or a lot – it is killing you. It’s a weight holding you down, preventing you from giving your best to the world – and we need your best.

How many of you went to college and racked up a massive amount of student loan debt to complete a degree in the arts? I did. By the time I finished my sophomore year of college, I had racked up $25,000 in student loan debt. Ironically, I was working so much as a freelance musician, teacher, and retail associate that, along with my partial scholarships, I could have paid the other half of my tuition out-of-pocket and keep my living expenses paid (as a matter of fact, when I “woke up” in my junior year, that’s actually what I managed to do, but the damage was already done).

Did you put your instrument, your camera, your computer, or maybe even your art supplies on a credit card? Did you borrow money for a car? I did – two cars, actually, and the first one was somewhere near 30% interest!

It may feel normal, but debt is preventing you from making your greatest contributions to the rest of the world.

Debt is making your career decisions for you.

You didn’t make a bad decision by studying your art or your craft – you simply made a bad decision with money.

How many of you took an 8-5 job after you finished your degree because you had to pay the bills? What opportunities have you turned down over the years because you had the weight of your debts hanging around your neck? How many of you have quit your art because you have to spend so much time making money at a “real job” instead of creating?

What would you do differently today if the obligations of paying the minimum payments to which you are so accustomed weren’t around anymore? Would you move to a new city? Take a more enjoyable job? Would you quit the 8-5 grind? Would you start creating again?

Debt sucks.

Debt may be normal in our society today, but I don’t care. I know from personal experience how damaging it is to our creativity. Make the decision today – declare debt to be the enemy of your art.

“How can I possibly live without debt?”

A year and a half ago, my wife and I made the decision to declare debt as the enemy of our art. Since then, we’ve gotten on a budget, told our money where to go, and paid off nearly $30,000 in student loan, consumer, and car debt. We are on a plan to be totally debt free within two more years.

No, we don’t make six figures. No, we don’t live rent-free with relatives. We simply have sacrificed, planned, and made the decision to change. We still have fun, even on a budget; we still eat awesome food every now and then. But we have decided to make our own decisions about what we want to do in life, not let the crushing weight of our debts make those decisions for us. It can be done; we are living proof.

The world needs your creativity. We need your art, your words, your music, your voice. Please don’t let debt stifle it anymore.

P.S.

If you want to know how we have been so successful in throwing off the yoke of debt, please feel free to reach out to me here on my blog or at any of the social media sites listed on the home page. I have a lot of resources I’d love to share with you, as well as some awesome people you should listen to. It would be my pleasure to talk to you.

We are big fans of the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps as a roadmap for getting out of debt and building wealth, as well as his company’s EveryDollar budgeting app for keeping track of your money and telling it where to go.