Eighteen months ago, give or take a few days, my bicycle was stolen. Very upsetting, and an object lesson in why a decent home contents insurance policy goes a long way, but that’s another story…

Very shortly thereafter we moved home, and the new address was somewhat further away from work than before. This was one of several inconvenient features of our new abode. Also another story.

The question I asked myself was: Now that I don’t have a bicycle (because someone prefers to take from others than to earn for themselves), do I walk to work or take the underground (“subway” for you foreigners out there) to work every day?

I made a decision based on a vague notion that, given the choice, it’s better to not spend money. This is a decision I’ve stuck with for eighteen months, walking 45 minutes each way every single working day.

I also chose to walk because I’m all about taking control of my money, and this is one of those areas that I completely control my spending. If I can’t move the needle here, what chance do you have in areas you don’t directly control?

So I was looking for an idea for something to talk about on my blog today and it occurred to me that I’d never actually run the numbers on this decision, and I’ve spent approximately 450 hours walking as a consequence of this decision. So perhaps I should… you know… check?

It’s quite concerning having to check a decision that’s cost you so much time, facing the very real possibility that you’ve cost yourself several weeks of productive time pounding the pavement just for the sake of getting from A to B and saving a buck or two.

Anyway: How’s that worked out?

One of the basic concepts I’m sure we all understand is that little things add up to bigger things. One of these collections of little things that I’ve become good at over the years is doing things myself. Where before I might call someone to fix something, I’m quite likely to get it done on my own now.

This saves money, sure. It also has other advantages.

Repairing things around the house is a small, subtle money leakage. It’s also a frustration and a dependency that you can – to a large extent – manage out of your life.

One day, hopefully soon, you’ll reach that magical moment when you pay off the last of the debt and all the money you’ve been putting towards debt repayment no longer needs to go there. What now?

This is a fairly critical moment. The direction you set is likely to define what happens in your financial life going forward. You are faced with both risks and opportunities.

If you’ve set up the first three parts of the five-step plan appropriately, you should have a clear path to success in front of you.

By now you have

• A monthly budget that allows you to live within your means
• A system for keeping track of your costs, giving you the tools to stick to your budget
• An emergency fund with three months costs saved up, giving you a safety net in case anything should go wrong
• An amount of cash left over after your costs each month, which you will be using to pay down your debt

You now have a long, hopefully fairly straightforward path to being debt-free in front of you. We just need to calculate how long it will take us, and engage a process of continuous optimisation.

By now, if you followed step one and step two, you have a budget that, provided you can stick to it, throws off extra cash every month.

The temptation is to start paying down that horrible debt as fast as possible.

For the long-term success of your plan, however, it’s very, very, very important to build an emergency fund first.

So before you start paying down your debt, build an emergency fund. It will be good for your mental health, for your confidence and the for long-term success of your journey to a debt-free life.

In this step, we’re going to do most of the preparatory work for your journey out of debt. This mostly involves preparing a budget and sticking to it, but we’re going to go into a little more detail than that.

We’re going to do three things.

• Draw up a monthly budget that’s sustainable over the longer term
• Calculate how long it will take to work your way out of debt given the budget you’ve chosen
• Choose the methods you’ll use to track your progress and stick to your budget over the duration of your journey

You should have your minimalist budget that you prepared during the first step nearby as you’ll need to refer to it.

Let’s get started.

You’re at start of a journey, but in many ways you’ve made the most important decision. You’ve decided to do something about it. In this first step we’re going to build a minimalist budget that exposes the hard inner core of our most unavoidable expenses.

You’re at the point of maximum frustration. You’ve tried a few things but realise that you need a more organised, comprehensive approach. You’ve finally decided that you have to do something about your debt situation.

But where to start?

There’s only a certain amount of effort and energy you can dedicate to a task. As you probably know from bitter experience, if you don’t put your effort in the right places, and you don’t see some results, you’ll get discouraged and it will become impossible to continue.

Flicking through websites, we find many people who claim to have paid off staggering amounts of debt in record time. They make it seem almost too easy. Just download their printable and you’re home free, right? But you already know that’s not how it works.

You can’t transform a difficult debt situation into a debt-free life at the flick of a switch, or by applying a simple “life hack”. It’s going to take time, effort and a plan. The plan focuses your effort where it has the most effect and helps measure progress towards your goal.

Before you leap, take a step back. Take control of the smallest and easiest and most essential thing of all: Your day-to-day essentials. Draw up a minimalist budget of your most essential costs. This will give you an idea of what it’s possible for you to save each month.

This article explains how.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Do you wish you could eliminate your debt, create some financial security and find the right approach to regain control of your finances?

The bad news is that wishing isn’t enough.

The good news is that if you’re reading this, you’ve already figured that out for yourself and you’re ready to move on to something more effective.

What you need is a plan.

A plan provides structure, objectives, step-by-step initiatives you can follow and milestones that you can use to keep yourself motivated.

Without a plan, what you have are a jumble of tips, hacks, tricks and ideas that, while each useful in it’s own small way, don’t add up to much without some kind of framework or plan to organise them.

I’m going to present a plan that you can follow to identify the steps you need to conver your costs, repay your debt, understand your finances and take control of your financial life.

What percentage of the time do you use your car? How much of the time does it sit, empty and alone? Cars cost money to own and spend most of their time idle. You probably don’t need one.

Once you have a car, it’s difficult to imagine life without one. It becomes a part of a great many rituals and we build a life around the availability of the car for weekends, holidays, grocery runs and everything else in-between.

The car is, however, a huge money drain. It costs a fortune to own, to run and to insure. In this article I’m going to cover

• How much your car costs you
• The alternative modes of transport you could use
• What it’s like to live without a car
• How to switch to carless without losing your mind

I posted a few weeks ago with a savings plan calculator that allowed you to build you own 52-week savings plan using a google spreadsheet that I shared.

I thought about that some more and wanted to make it more versatile. What if you want to save over only 40 weeks, for example? What if you wanted to start with savings of £20 per week?

Check out this article to see the free online savings plan builder that achieves whatever target you choose.

The path to repaying your debts can be long, and one of the hardest things about completing that journey is finding the strength to stay the course for months on end as you rebuild your finances, one brick at a time.

One of the most motivating things you can do as you set out on this journey is to look forward to that time when you will be debt free. Visualize how your efforts will pay off and how your debt is gradually erased until you reach that moment when it is all finally reimbursed.

Visualizing the results of your efforts is known to be an effective motivating strategy when you’re looking to strengthen your resolve.

Any wall can only be built one brick at a time, but visualizing the completed wall is how you motivate yourself to keep picking up bricks.

This article provides an online tool that will allow you to draw a picture of your debt repayment journey, month by month, until everything is paid off.

I shamelessly participated in the traditional financial blog January epidemic of sending out 52-week savings plan sheets to my readers.

I decided upon a savings plan that doubles the amount you save every week from a very small base, so in my case, you started by investing 50p, then £1, then £1.50, until the 52nd week when you saved £26, and you’d have a box, or a jar, with £689 in it.

This savings plan post proved a bit more popular than average, in part because the concept is both appealing and approachable.

That’s a decent chunk of change that allows you to do something substantial, and the idea behind the plan is that it’s small enough an effort that anyone can sign on and stick to it until the end.

The reason everyone in this field suggests this is because it works. It’s something simple, tangible, that anyone can do.

But it’s a bit prescriptive. What if you really needed to save £827 to buy your Spring holiday trip for next year? Maybe my £689 plan isn’t all that useful to you…

Since the math is really simple, I thought I’d review my post from last week and go one better, letting you set your own target and print out your own savings sheet, based on the target and the method you choose.