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About Us

Thanks for stopping by! My name is Lance Tanner and in a nutshell, I started LeaveDebtBehind.com with the purpose of creating a place where I could write about lessons that I have learned on my journey to get out of debt and hopefully inspire others to do the same.

I also wanted to create a community where people like me, people fighting their way out of debt, can give and take advice on how to escape our debt, live on less, and build more income.  That’s why you’ll find articles from more people than just me, and our authors write from a deep well of experience and have a passion for communicating practical, insightful, and common-sense truths of personal finance.  As an aside, If you have such a passion, and would like to submit an article for publication on LDB, let us know here.

LDB is About Escaping Your Debt

Have you ever been in a house fire? a car accident? a violent storm? Hopefully not, as these are all pretty scary situations.  Our first instinct would be to run to safety.  That’s how we should view debt in our lives.  I don’t care who says it, there is no such thing as good debt and we should run away from it as if our lives depended on it.

What kind of freedom can a person in debt experience?

None.You live to pay debt.

Is the person in debt a slave to the lender?

Yes. You live to pay debt.

So the point is to escape your debt at almost any cost.  That includes settling your debt, consolidating your debt or snowballing your debt.  It must go.

If you’re in heavy debt, and I’m not talking here about a manageable mortgage, stay here a leavedebtbehind.com to learn ways to escape your debt for good.

Here’s a few basic principles that we attempt to live by here at LDB:

Avoid More Debt

Until you’re out of debt, stop spending money.  Seriously.  Use the 72 hour rule -if you can live 72 hours without it, you don’t need it.  You don’t need that new car. Yours works fine.

Live on Less

Yep.  Its true.  You need to spend less than you make.  An extremely simple principle, but sometimes difficult to follow. Our articles on budgeting and being frugal will help you learn positive habits in order to master this all-important principle.  And you can still have fun while spending less.  Your future will thank you for it.

Make More Money

Who doesn’t want to make a little (or a lot) of extra money.  Whether it’s career advice or learning to start out on your own with your own internet business, you can do it with a little help from thoughtful articles from your friends here at leavedebtbehind.com

A Little Bit About Me

My story is probably typical of those people finding themselves in a pile of debt -  It took a few years of careless spending and all or the sudden I’m paying for life’s essentials with my credit card, struggling to keep my family afloat.

I finally learned some hard lessons and took some drastic measures, changed my lifestyle and spending habits.

It wasn’t easy.

But I did it.

Enter the 1st Credit Card Offer

I applied an got a $1000 limit Visa card. On top of college loans, and daily expenses, the credit card debt kept piling up. I was easily making the payments, in fact, I paid off the whole balance a few times. But life’s expenses caught up with me.

I got married and we both got better jobs and paid off our debt. But then came the apartment we wanted. We sank back into a pattern with our credit cards of “Oh we’ll pay it off, we both work and make decent money.”

Soon baby #1 arrived. My wife quit working. Before we knew it, we were in over $10K in credit card debt, plus $8K in school loans. I realized I had more debt than I could handle and less income to handle it with.

Enter 0% Credit Card Offers

This is when we started playing the balance transfer game. We never missed a payment. We played this game over and over again until we had about 4 credit cards between us carrying a total balance of over $20K.

Enter House and the “Home Depot Hundred”

We bought a house right before we had our second child, and everyone knows, when you buy a house, your expenses go way up. As a friend once told me, once you buy a house, you have to add the “Home Depot Hundred” to your monthly budget. So true.

Then we fell into the white picket fence trap. We wanted nice things. We had a major lack of self-control to avoid buying too many nice things.

Enter Unexpected Expenses

I had to have some serious dental work done. Thousands of dollars’ worth. How did I pay for it, ahhhh my trusty Visa, of course.

• Engine repairs on my usually reliable Honda Accord.
• Other major work on our mini-van.
• Roof leaks.
• Broken central air conditioning.

With no budgeting, our debt started to soar. Balance transferring continued. Soon we had child #3 and 6 credit cards with a balance of $35K.

Enter Exit Strategy

At this point, in order to pay our minimums, we were literally putting groceries and gas on credit cards. I was putting my precious credit score ahead of common sense. I had the desire to pay all of it back and but I was putting everything at risk just to make the minimum payments and to maintain my sense honesty and decency.

I knew something had to give.

That’s when we started considering all our options. Consolidation, Home Equity Loan, Settlement? What to do?

With great anxiety, we finally decided to try debt settlement and we started budgeting, saving money, being self-controlled, and it worked.

Does this story sound any bit familiar? I know I’m not alone and neither are you if you’ve experienced some of these same things.

There is hope.

Please browse the rest of the site to get some information that will help you get going and beat the debt monster before it consumes you.

Thanks for visiting.

All the Best,

Lance

Need to contact us, have an idea or comment, or would like to have an article published on LDB? Get in touch with us here.