Facing a mountain of debt can feel overwhelming. It can leave you feeling like debt is controlling your life and make you want to do anything to change your financial direction.
The actual knowledge you need to eliminate debt is pretty straightforward, but making it happen is tricky. We live in a world full of distractions and temptations, and our culture seems to laud spending more and more and more money.
Trying to turn around financially in an environment like this is like walking on coals. It’s scary, and it can hurt a little, but it can be done.
Here are four key books for walking you through this process. You’ll figure out why you’re getting out of debt, create a game plan to make it happen and then determine how to change your routines so it’s easy to execute that game plan.
“Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin is the book you need to read to understand why you would want to eliminate your debt and put yourself in a stronger financial place.
The focus of “Your Money or Your Life” is on reconsidering the role money has in your life. What are your big goals and dreams? Where do you want your life to be going? Do the things you’re buying regularly help you get there? Do you really get lasting value out of those things? Are they really worth the energy you’re spending at your job to buy those things?
This book calls on you to think seriously about the life decisions you’re making as a result of your spending choices. It doesn’t demand that you live a stoic life without spending, but it does call on you to think about the real cost of the things that you’re doing and whether or not those costs make you happy.
I consider “Your Money or Your Life” to be an essential first read for anyone who is starting to think about changing their finances in any way.
“The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey is simply the best book around for spelling out an easy-to-follow plan for taking care of your debts. He organizes everything down to a set of debt repayment “baby steps” that are so simple that the basics can be fully explained on the back of a business card.
Ramsey’s tone throughout the book is that of a coach who guides you through the steps you need to take to get your finances under control. He spells out exactly what you need to do and surrounds it with inspirational and motivational writing to help you light a fire under yourself and make it happen.
Ramsey’s plan is simple and clear, but it’s also not easy to follow. No plan for getting out of debt is easy because it requires you to go against the behaviors that got you into that situation in the first place. Ramsey’s coaching throughout the book is a good first step, but you’ll need more than that to make the change you want.
“Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath addresses that very problem. The focus of “Switch” is spelled out in the subtitle: “How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.”
“Switch” discusses how we can make changes in life by looking at two systems in our brain that manage our behaviors — a “rational” system where we plan and organize things and an “emotional” system where we respond impulsively.
The key to making change happen is to align both of those systems. As the book explains, you have to figure out which of your systems is already pointing toward the goal you want, and then realign the other system to point in that direction as well using a set of very smart strategies.
“The Path of Least Resistance” by Robert Fritz takes another angle on how to make change happen in your life.
Fritz’s book argues that most of the time we take whatever is the easiest path to our destination in life. “The Path of Least Resistance” is all about finding ways to add resistance to the behaviors you don’t want to continue, like your frivolous purchases, and removing resistance from the behaviors that you do want to continue, like saving money and paying off debts. Combining this approach with the dual-system approach from “Switch” can add up to real change in your life.
Taken together, these books spell out a recipe for achieving powerful financial goals. “Your Money or Your Life” helps you spell out why you’re doing this. “The Total Money Makeover” gives you the game plan and some motivation. “Switch” and “The Path of Least Resistance” help you figure out how to implement that plan.
Add all those pieces together, and you have a map that can lead you down the path to debt freedom.
More from U.S. News
4 Personal Finance Books That Will Inspire You
Books for Every Stage of Your Financial Life
4 Essential Books for Fixing Your Debt Problems originally appeared on usnews.com
