Are you someone holding on to massive credit card
debts or personal loan debts and do not know how to pay it off? Are you also someone who spends
frivolously on shopping, going on numerous trips and buying stuff? Are you the person who's kind of
worried right now and do not know what to do with all your debts piling up? No worries, I understand
how you feel. I too was that person. Today's video is about how I went from being in massive credit
card debt to paying it all off in three years and these are the three secrets you must know. Hey
there, if you're new to our Channel I'm Fran. I'm a one-half of the Corporate Breakout Couple and
together with my husband John, we broke out of corporate in year 2020 at the age of 40 years old.
Please
Like And Subscribe to our Channel so that you don't miss out on any of our videos and it also
helps with the YouTube algorithm. Thank you! [Music] So the first thing that you need to know about
me is that in the past, I wasn't very good with personal finance even though I held a business
degree. I didn't truly understand how money really works and talking about numbers scares the crap
out of me. And the thing is I always found that money always came very easy to me even from my
childhood all the way into my early 20s. Therefore I always spend like there's no tomorrow and had
very little savings. If you've been following us for a while, in our other videos I did share
that in my early 20s to my 30s I earned a lot of money and at the same time I also did share
that I hated being an employee so in my mid-20s I started a bikini company with an ex colleague
of mine and remember because I had very little savings, I actually took out a personal loan
to fund the bikini business.
Therefore in my mid-20s I had a five digit personal loan. I also
had a car installment loan and I had started to rack up a little bit of credit card debt. A year
later my business partner and I, we wrapped out the bikini business even though the business is
profitable. I wanted out of the business because I didn't really enjoy the nature of the industry
but guess what? What I did was I took my share of the profits and I spent it all instead of paying
off my personal loan. And around the same time I had a promotion. I went from being an individual
contributor with a huge commission scheme to managing a team. My basic salary actually went
up, my commission structure went down because if my team didn't perform well, then I'll earn
less.
So therefore my annual salary did decrease a little bit but actually my spending did not.
Therefore I found that I could not pay off my credit card bills in full anymore and that's
where my credit card debt started to stack up. So slowly, my credit card debt went from a four
digit to a low five digit to a mid-range five digit figure and scared the crap out of me.
And fortunately not long after that, I received a job offer in Singapore so I decided to take
the job in Singapore because of the fantastic exchange rate. Long story short, I thought the job
in Singapore would solve all my debt problems. So did all my debt problems go away? Of course
not! Because after I settled my Malaysian credit card debt, guess what? I had now Singapore
credit card debts. So what happened? Well I went to Ritz-Carlton's famous champagne brunches
often and it didn't help that I worked at Orchard Road so I went shopping often, sometimes on my
lunch breaks. I knew my spending was getting out of control but I just didn't know how to
stop. I signed up for a three-day millionaire mindset course in Singapore and I even paid a
lot of money for a VIP ticket and I sat right in the front.
In one of the exercises, they
asked us to write down the age at which we would like to retire and how much money we
would need. So this was in back in 2010, so I was 30 years old and I wrote that okay I'd like
to retire at the age of 50 years old and I need an amount of Singapore dollars three million
dollars in order to retire. So I looked at the paper with the three million dollars written
on it. I thought about how much debt I was in and then I balled up the piece of paper and
I threw it away. I didn't even bother to go back to the course to finish it because in my
mind, I was thinking there's no way I would be able to save up that much that amount of money
in order to retire so I just gave up all hope. Therefore I continued my merry way of spend spend
spend spend spend. Now about two years later, I was fortunate enough to meet John. He sat me down and
he crafted out a financial plan for me to get out credit card debt.
By the time, I was holding a mid
five figure credit card debt in Singapore dollars. When I first met Fran, I wanted to help her
clear her credit card debts so that we can then come together and put our finances to work. So we
came together, we put out a plan, we evaluate the numbers and we came up with a three-year plan
to help her to clear her debts. In the plan, it includes a timeline, what's the repayment amount
and what's your expenses and all the breakdowns that we need to evaluate. We looked at each
expense starting from the highest which is her rent at the point of time. I was staying on my
own and she was paying rent so it doesn't make sense for her to pay as well. So we consolidated
our costs and made sure that every dollar that we spend on is put to good work. So after three
years, I paid off all my credit card debts. Yippee! Now of course, during that time as well I invested in a lot of self-awareness courses which also made me understand myself more and where did all
my money problems come from.
My getting out debt journey certainly has been an
interesting one and very educational so here are three secrets that you must
know in order to get out of massive debt. Secret number one your money beliefs. As a human
being, we all have beliefs about everything. For example, about success, beliefs about failure,
beliefs about starting a business, beliefs about employees, employers, about relationships and
mot certainly beliefs about money. When I evaluated my own money beliefs, I realized that my belief
about money was easy come easy go. Therefore I had no qualms about spending every single dollar I
had because my belief was when I spend it all, more will just suddenly come.
When I changed my belief
about money from Easy Come Easy Go to money is a tool that I'm going to use to get me
out of debt and become eventually financially free, that was when everything changed for me. So
my question to you is what are your money beliefs? Secret number two having purpose for your money. Back then I had no purpose for my money. What was
I even saving for? I didn't know. So I had all that money sitting in my bank account, I might as well spend it right? Now however, it is different. Every dollar represents Time Freedom.
It means that I do not
need to go to work to exchange my time for money. I now appreciate every single dollar that I
have in my bank account because this money is working hard for me. My question to you now
is what is your purpose for saving up money? The third and final secret is being Financial
Literate. So many of us are financially ignorant. That's because schools don't teach us financial
literacy. Money is something that everyone uses and yet it is not taught to us. We're just
expected to go into the world and ultimately we ought to know how money truly works and how we can
use it to our benefit. I really need to give credit to John because he really taught me on how the
financial system works, how the banks really work and how we can use money to our benefit and how
money can truly work for us. Over the years, I also signed up for financial courses that taught me
how to invest my money properly with proper risk management put into place.
Now my question to you
is are you willing to put in the work to educate yourself to be financially literate so that you
can get out of debt and hopefully be on your way to Financial Freedom? Thank you for listening to me
share my financial story and watching this video. I hope this video has been educational and beneficial
to you. Please Like and Share this video to your friends and family. You never know who
could actually gain from watching it. Please Subscribe to our Channel for more such
videos and we'll see you soon. Bye! [Music].