Do You Know Your Debt Number?

Most people know their beacon score. Very few know their debt number.

If you avoid the mailbox and pay bills only once a month, then you are avoiding knowing your debt number. By avoiding your debt, you 
are allowing yourself to dig a deeper debt hole. By not knowing how bad your debt situation is and just blindly making minimum 
payments and hiding, you are allowing yourself to continue a cycle of overspending. 

Foundation for change

Rather than hiding from all of those bills, take them all out at once and look at the giant mess as a whole. It will be scary and it may shock you.  
Use this picture of your debt as a foundation for change.

Here’s what I recommend that you do.

First, take out the most recent statement for every single debt that you have. Some of them might be online, others might be stashed away somewhere. Get out all of them. If you’ve got any that you’re “hiding” (like a credit card bill you’re hiding from a spouse or something), you have to include that, too.

Then, total up the current balance of all of those debts. Add them all up. Don’t worry about interest rates or anything else. What you’re looking for now is the true situation when it comes to your debt.

When you see that total, it’s going to be painful. It should be. That number is the truth. It’s not hiding anything. From now on, you shouldn’t hide anything, either. Make it your mission to drop your debt number to zero.