Getting Financially Fit Before Investing.

[Alyxaundria Sanford]

Does anyone have any budgets or regimens they implemented and found resourceful to prepare their finances for investing?

A lot of people on the podcasts who start out with "no money" had someone to ask for money (mom/dad) or at least a two family household. I'm trying to figure out my options as someone in debt and on a single income.  

[David Hays]

Hi @Alyxaundria Sanford

It sounds to me like you have your head in the right place  - it really is ideal to stabilize your financial situation before trying to push it forward to greater heights. I've been in your position before, and have dealt with clearing off more than $10k in consumer debt to get to where I am now ($0 consumer debt, <$1k in business debt); I can't give you a sample budget (as everybody's situation is different), but I could share with you a simple budget spreadsheet I drafted up a few years ago? You can easily find similar (and better) spreadsheets for free many places online, as well. 

The key, I found, was that you need to be brutally honest with yourself regarding spending, minimize your expenses, and draft a plan to eliminate your debt as quickly as possible. A fallacy that occurs quite often is the thought that all those "low and no-money down" kind of deals are for when you're broke - even Brandon Turner, who literally wrote the book on it, regularly says that that is not the case. Instead, these strategies are really for sophisticated negotiations, and should not be used to aggravate an existing precarious financial situation.