The Cause & Cure Of Money Trouble

April 26, 2012

Interview with Gary Sirak, author of the book If Your Money Talked...What Secrets Would It Tell?

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Mike Carruthers:
60% of Americans pay off their credit cards every month.

Gary Sirak:
It’s the 40% that don’t that’s the big problem. And I can’t tell you Mike how many people walk in this office with huge credit bills and have no clue how they’re going to pay them off.
 

Financial planning expert Gary Sirak, author of the bookIf Your Money Talked...What Secrets Would It Tell?

The biggest abuse I’ve ever seen, I had a client of mine that had 10 credit cards and they were all maxed out. This person made a very good living but had 10 credit cards all maxed out paying top interest on them and he had just applied for his 11th card so he could go on a vacation and he was proud to tell me that.

If you have large amounts of credit card debt there’s a good chance that you don’t have a lot of cash in the bank.

So many people have 0 reserve account and I think that’s – if you want to know the other biggest problem it’s the lack of reserve, people have no money to back up their system. I’m a strong proponent of putting some cash away because you’re only one more disaster from having a huge problem again. And if you can put some cash away at the same time I’m much more interested in paying the card off slowly and having some cash reserve. I think it’s critical that you do that.

How do you know that you have a problem? Well Gary says you’re in trouble when…

You can’t pay off your cards off in 30 days. You’re in trouble when you’re buying things you can’t afford to buy. You’re in trouble when you’re spending money that you don’t have on money you think that you’re going to have down the road but don’t have it yet.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.