Am I Stuck in the Minimum Payment Trap Forever?

Speaker A00:00:00

You send the payment, you're on time, you do it every month, but the balance, it's barely moving. And you start wondering, am I going to be paying this thing until Jesus comes back?If you've been stuck in the minimum payment trap, and hey, that's exactly what it is. You know how discouraging it can be. But I want to tell you, friend, there is a way out and it might start with an amount smaller than you think.So stick with me because we're going to talk about how to break that cycle today and finally start moving towards freedom. Going to continue talking about debts on today's show.

Speaker B00:00:33

This is Financially Confident Christian, your daily dose of gospel, grounded insight and faith driven tips to help you break the cycle of financial shame with confidence.

Speaker A00:00:46

Hey, friend. Welcome back to your daily Financially Confident Christian.I'm Ralph and I'm here to help you build confidence with your money and align your finances with God's wisdom. And we're continuing in our series Breaking Financial Chains. Yesterday we started talking about debts and specifically we faced our debt head on.We made that master list so we know exactly what we owe. If you missed yesterday's show or you missed any of our shows, you can find them all at our website.That's@financiallyconfidentchristian.com but today we're going to build on that. We're tackling one of the most frustrating realities of debt and that's paying month after month and feeling like nothing's changing.Like you're on that treadmill. You're just not getting anywhere. And I'll never forget sitting with a couple who brought me their credit card statements.I mean, I'm gonna tell you right now, they had a stack of credit card statements, but these folks have been paying faithfully for years. I'm talking about month after month, year after year.They were faithful in it, but the balances, they only dropped a few hundred dollars from where they even started that process. And the truth is they weren't overspending anymore. They were really managing their money, but they were still caught in the trap.And here's the painful truth. Minimum payments are designed to keep you there. They're designed to keep you in a trap. They're like walking on a treadmill.You're moving, you have action, but you're not getting anywhere. You're still staying in the same place. And maybe you're listening right now. You're like, ralph, I felt that too.And I look at the numbers and think, at this rate, I'll be in debt forever. And the sad truth, if you're just making the minimum payments, and I know you don't want to hear this, but you will be in debt forever.If you're just making the minimum payments, you will be in debt forever. And friend, I get it. It's frustrating. It's exhausting. I've been there. I've lived that. I've lived that.Staying in that cycle of minimum payments for year upon year. But I've got some good news for you. You're not stuck forever. And you don't have to magically come up with hundreds of extra dollars to get unstuck.So many people think you got to find hundreds of dollars. But even small, consistent changes can flip the script.Well, let's get right into God's word today and let's arm ourselves with some scripture to help us get out of this cycle of minimum payments. The first one comes to us from Proverbs chapter 13, verse 4. It says this.The lazy person craves and and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. What a great piece of scripture. Again, that's Proverbs chapter 13, verse 4. What's it talking about here? The lazy person craves. Yeah, they crave it.They want to get out of debt, but they don't get anywhere. But those desires of the diligent, they're fully satisfied. We can apply that to breaking free of this cycle today.And this one I want to use that I used on the show yesterday because I just want to reaffirm this. And that's Proverbs 22:7 talks about this. The borrower is slave to the lender.Well, listen, if you don't want to be a slave anymore, breaking free takes diligence. It takes a plan. And it takes the decision to stop feeding the lender more than you have to.Because that's what you're doing when you're just making the minimum payments. You know what you're doing. You're feeding the lender just enough to keep them in that cycle where you're never breaking free.So here's the mindset shift you really need to embrace. Today, your goal isn't to throw a mountain of money at the debt tomorrow. Let's face it, you don't have it to throw it at.It feel like most of us, you're just barely getting by, but your goal is to chip away at the chains a little more every single month. Because here's the truth.When you pay even a little extra on purpose, intentionally, you start to starve that interest and you start to feed your freedom. So here's your one action step today. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to pick your target debt. Now, yesterday we made that list.See, there was a reason for making that list. There was a method to my madness, as they say. I want you to just choose one of those debts to focus on first.Now, we could have a large discussion about the snowball method, the avalanche method, smallest bounces make quick wins, highest interest to save more money. It doesn't really matter at this point.I just want you to grab one of those and I want you to find maybe 10 or $20 extra that you can send towards it. I want you to look at your budget. Maybe you could skip a coffee run. Maybe you could bag lunch this week from home, maybe pause a streaming Service.Just find 10 or $20. And here's the thing, here's the key to the whole thing.I want you to send it immediately, as soon as you have it, as soon as you've got that money in your hands or it's extra in your bank account, make that extra payment right away. Don't wait until later. If you wait till later, guess what? Those dollars might find another purpose.So I just want you to really focus on finding that one debt, finding 10 or 20 bucks and sending it immediately. And then I just want you to sit back and watch that balance drop.It's not going to be immediate and it won't be dramatic at first, but you're proving something to yourself. You're proving you're moving in the right direction. Because here's the truth. Momentum is powerful.And once you see even a little progress, you'll be motivated to find a little more extra month and then the month after that until one day. And I promise you this, if you stay diligent, that debt will be gone. How about we pray together?Father God, thank you for giving us this wisdom and the discipline we need to walk in financial freedom. Lord, help us to see small opportunities and take them seriously.Give us the persistence to keep chipping away and the faith to believe that no debt is too big for you to help us overcome. And we ask this in confidence in Jesus name. Amen, friend. Breaking the minimum payment trap doesn't require a miracle overnight.There are no miracles when it comes to this. But what it does require is faithfulness and a decision to start this very day.So I want to encourage you, go find that $10 or $20 this week, send it to your debt target right away, and watch what God can do with your obedience. And I want to give you something to help you on that journey. I want to give you a free copy of my book. This is my latest book.I just got done writing it. It's called how to Become a Financially Confident Christian. I'm going to give you that book for absolutely nothing. Just go to my website.That's at financiallyconfidentchristian.com/becoming Again, that's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/becoming. I want to give you a free copy of my book.Now tomorrow we're talking about how to actually find that 10 or $20 to help fund that extra debt payoff when your budget already feels impossibly tight. I'm going to talk about jeans at Thanksgiving tomorrow. That's a little bit of foreshadowing what we're going to talk about.But I want to charge you right now. Let's all go out there today and be financially confident Christians. I believe in you, believe in yourself.God bless you and you have a great day today.