Deeds Done, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016

Barrett TownshipNLGM Inc. to Robert Anthony Monzo and Robert Matthew Monzo, Route 447, Lot 1, "Map of Lands of Jeanne Snyder," Parcel No. 01-6388-04-73-0832, $275,000Brian and Victoria Winot to Renata Degil and Anthony Cermel, Lot 209, Section A, Wildwood Manor Estates, $206,000Hamilton TownshipKarl Mayer Jr. and Renate I. Mayer Irrevocable Asset Trust to Lance D. and Diance M. Goldberg, 3 parcels Rotue 45090 from Route 45007 to [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2dljQlS

NCC Monroe recognized for energy sustainability

The Northampton Community College Monroe Campus became the first college to host a leg of a federal government tour of environmentally efficient schools in the country.The campus was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Strides Tour on Thursday afternoon, as local, state and federal representatives visited the school to learn more about NCC’s practices in environmental education.This year’s tour of schools is focusing on sustainability [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2cTZq4u

Appellate court overturns 'party house' ruling in Pocono Township zoning decision

A state appellate court has ruled that a Pocono Township woman can offer her home as a "party house" in a residentially zoned area — as long as she is a part-time occupant.The court reversed a Monroe County court ruling and zoning hearing board decision that prohibited short-term rentals in a low-density residential zoning district, according to court papers.The three-member judicial board handed down the decision on Sept. 19, with one [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2dxdKgI

Saylorsburg man claws back from 'rock bottom' to help others

"I still struggle with things that trigger my anxiety and depression. For example, I'll be home alone, watching TV, and see an image of a dad fishing with his son or eating dinner at home with his family. I'll think how I never got to do any of that with my family because I was away working all the time or struggling with my addiction. ... That's when I feel like screaming, crying or throwing things around the house. I've gotten better at controlling those urges, but the pain and regret are no [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2dx3LYM

Television pundit a stranger to mom at home

CAMP HILL (AP) — She's looking for a little boy.Her pink polished nails reach toward the picture window in a Camp Hill living room.Is he out there? Did he drown? Was he in an accident?These are the questions and fears troubling Kit's 97-year-old mind.Her son sits next to her and softly says, "Mom, it's me, Jeffrey. I'm that little boy."Kathleen "Kit" Lord's failing eyesight makes it hard to see him, even when her 65-year-old son's face fills up [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2cTSmVt

Colleges lavishing more financial aid on wealthy students

STORRS, Conn. (AP) — Spencer Mulligan knew his family could pay for his college education, even without loans or grants. So when the University of Connecticut offered a merit award of $20,000 over four years, he saw it as a bonus.As a discount on in-state tuition, it brought the cost well below half of what his family might have paid at his other top choices, Penn State or the University of Vermont."My dad was kind of split because he didn't want to push me into going to [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2cJL9nR

Crushing debt: Life with student loans

Living with his family isn’t something Kevin Furst envisioned eight years after graduating from Philadelphia University with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design communication.Not only did Furst believe that the majority of his post-graduate earnings would be earmarked toward his own home and expenses, he also counted on completing his long-time goal of joining the Peace Corps.“I am reaching out to the community in hopes that someone could help me [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2dA2Psd

Inspiration from Andrew Sullivan, Dan Harris, Albert Camus, and More

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.

1. Stephen Jay Gould on a great tragedy

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” – Stephen Jay Gould

A few weeks ago, another website – I’m not sure which one, to tell the truth, and I couldn’t quickly find it with an email search – asked me for a quote that inspired me to think. I sent in a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of my favorite writers, because I happened to be thinking about it at that time. Emerson has many, many great quotes about self-reliance, something I strongly believe in.

After that, though, the question about what quote that has made me think more than any other kept coming back to me. That Emerson quote that I used was a good one, but was it really the true answer? Upon reflection, I think I’ve spent more of my life with this quote from Stephen Jay Gould running through my head.

I can’t help but wonder how many truly great minds have been lost to the circumstances of history. The greatest thinker who ever lived likely never shared a significant thought in his or her life, as that life was preoccupied with the daily efforts to merely stay alive. That, to me, is the greatest tragedy in all of humanity.

The great scientists, the great leaders, the great inventors, the great artists that we know are likely all overshadowed by the talents of those who never got the chance to develop their skills and their thoughts and their ideas. Instead, they were born into circumstances of great misfortune, spending their life as a slave or as a sharecropper or as a sweatshop worker.

Humankind will never be able to achieve its true greatness as long as the greatest among us never have the chance to flower, and that kind of flowering isn’t easy or obvious. Einstein was largely regarded as a failure in school, for example. It wasn’t until he found a place in society and a chance to flower that his mind flourished and his ideas were shared, ideas that today power inventions as disparate as atomic energy and GPS.

How do we make that happen? I honestly don’t know. It’s an incredible problem. But it’s that problem, both in the misfortune of lost opportunity that it brings to every one of us and in the difficulty of finding a way beyond it, that occupies a surprising amount of my thoughts.

2. I Used to Be a Human Being by Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan is a long-time current affairs blogger and writer who recently stepped away from all blogging. This article explains why he did it.

The real reason? Internet addiction, in essence. His constant need to be connected and to have an endless stream of information and news was robbing him of a great deal of his quality of life.

I think that anyone who has a job that involves online writing, podcasting, video creation, or other online creative work can feel some real echoes in what Sullivan is writing about here. I certainly can. Even though I intentionally put time aside for things away from the computer with my cell phone turned off and nothing to distract me, there are times where I feel almost trapped by the constant need to write fresh things and to have new things to write about.

I have posted at least one article a day somewhere online for the last ten years. I don’t believe I have missed a single day. Most of those articles are more than 1,000 words in length. Many are thousands of words in length. In order to do that, I have to have a very clear routine for what I’m doing and my “muse” – my cutesy name for my internal ability to write – basically never gets to really rest for very long.

It can wear at you. At times, it really wears at me. This article speaks to that experience amazingly well.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the silence of friends

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are people in life who will always speak negatively about us. There are people who will treat us as stepping stones to whatever thing they want to march toward. That’s just life.

It’s our friends that are supposed to serve as a retreat from those things. They provide companionship, friendship, the window to explore new ideas and new things without being alone. They pick you up when you fall.

Yet, sometimes, those friends aren’t there. In those moments when you need them most, they vanish into the mists.

Are they really friends? Yes. Sometimes they don’t know that they’re needed.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that a friend that isn’t there for you when you need them can often turn out to be a greater scar than a person who is cruel to you.

I try my best to be there for my truest friends. Sometimes, I’m sure I fail at it, but it’s something I never intend or want to do.

4. Sal Khan on teaching for mastery, not scores

From the description:

Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven’t always grasped the basics? Yes, it’s complicated, but educator Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.

When I watched this video, I couldn’t help but agree with Sal Khan’s argument that people master skills at different paces and that the best educational system is one that enables people to build mastery at their own pace.

The problem is that our current educational system essentially makes that impossible.

Having individual students work at their own pace works great in classrooms with small sizes. Let’s say you have a class that lasts for fifty minutes and you have ten students in the class. That means, each and every day, you can devote five minutes to each student. That’s long enough to provide some good individual direction to that student with 45 additional daily minutes for practice. Even better, imagine if the class had only five students in it – that’s ten minutes per student per day, with forty additional minutes for practice. If an individual student causes problems in this kind of setting, a teacher can handle it one-on-one without disrupting instruction of other students. Plus, teachers would have much more time for individual feedback on their work, and there would be less need for homework to demonstrate mastery.

The problem is that funding doesn’t exist to allow for class sizes that small. Instead, we have classes with 25 students in them. This means there’s only time for two minutes of individual instruction per student. That’s simply not enough time for students to have any real individual instruction. The teacher thus has to teach the class as a whole, meaning that some students are bored with the slow pace and others are lost with the fast pace. Even worse, disruptive students interrupt the learning for all 25 students, not just their own learning.

This video is more of a discussion of what education could be rather than what it is forced to be due to limited educational funding. It’s patently obvious to anyone that this model would serve students better, but it’s also much more expensive than our current models.

Videos like this make me think about what’s possible and what we could do better as a society, and to me that’s inspirational.

5. Madeleine L’Engle on vulnerability

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

It’s easy for an introvert like myself to simply choose not to talk in a challenging situation. If there are lots of new people or just one or two people that I’m not comfortable with, I can barely squeeze out small talk. I feel very vulnerable.

When I was younger, I felt that vulnerability and I believed that growing up would solve that vulnerability. As an adult, I realize that the only way to solve that kind of vulnerability is to pick and choose the areas I really want to fix in my own life and to work hard at fixing them.

Growing up isn’t a phase in life. You stop growing up when you choose to stop growing.

6. Meditation 101, narrated by Dan Harris

Here’s the full transcript of the video:

Despite what you may have heard, meditation does not involve joining a group, paying any fees, wearing any special outfits, sitting in a funny position or believing in anything in particular. It is simple, secular, scientifically validated exercise for your brain. You don’t have to do it yet, but just so you know here are the three steps.

One: Sit with your back straight and your eyes closed.

Two: Notice the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. Pick a spot where it’s most prominent. Usually that’s your nose or your chest or your belly, and just focus your full attention on the feeling of your breath going in and
coming out.

Now as soon as you try to do this, your mind’s going to go nuts. You’re going to start thinking about: what am I going to have for lunch, why’d I say that dumb thingto my boss, your brain’s gonna go nuts and that’s fine.

The whole game is to notice when you’ve gotten lost, and to start over. And to start over again. And again. And again. And every time you do that, it’s like a bicep curl for your brain, and it shows up on the brain scans. Scientists have found this in the lab. It’s also by the way, a radical act.

You’re breaking a lifetime’s habit of walking around in a fog of projection and rumination and you’re actually focusing on what’s happening right now. Meditation is unlike anything you do in the rest of your life. “Failure” is actually success! As I said the whole game is just trying, failing, starting again, failing, starting again.

Here’s my advice: You should be meditating every day, 5-10 minutes a day. That’s it. This doesn’t require some giant investment. I don’t care how busy you are, you have 5-10 minutes to give this a shot. I guarantee you it will make a big difference.

I often talk about meditation on The Simple Dollar and how it has changed my life. This is probably the best brief description of it that I’ve ever found. The video clocks in at exactly two minutes and it explains the idea in a nutshell, both the practice and benefits.

For me, meditation has made it possible for me to focus far better on tasks than I have in a very long time. During the mid ’00s, I had a very hard time focusing on tasks for very long. Even during the period when I was simultaneously holding down a full time job, launching The Simple Dollar in my spare time, and figuring out how to be a father and a good husband to boot, I still had a hard time focusing for more than a minute here or a minute there.

You can really tell this is true if you read some of the earliest posts on the site. They’re super brief and while they cover one point well, they often don’t include enough action or example to really do anything based on the article. That’s because I had a hard time focusing on one topic long enough to write anything with much depth at all. I’d lose focus, then snap back to attention, then lose focus, then snap back, over and over and over.

Focused, mindful meditation fixed that. It’s almost as if adopting this as a daily practice applied some kind of magic medicine to my brain. I can now write a rough draft of a 3,000 word article in a single sitting, then edit the whole thing in a second single sitting (it’s a bad idea to do them back to back, I’ve learned). I can put my cell phone down and just utterly ignore it for hours, something that was basically impossible for me just a few years ago.

The narrator of this video, Dan Harris, wrote an amazing book called 10% Happier that I strongly recommend. Harris’s book starts with a discussion of him having an on-air panic attack on live television when he was a news presenter at ABC News. He had that panic attack in large part because his inner voice that drove him to success (and a workaholic life) also made it very difficult for him to ever relax and live in the moment or to focus on a specific thing for very long. His solution? Basically, it’s the little meditation trick in this video, the same one I use.

7. Anand Giridharadas’s letter to all who have lost in this era

From the description:

How did we get a world of such disconnect, fracture and fear? Writer Anand Giridharadas tackles this question by reading a letter to his fellow citizens in which he confesses to his and others’ part in ignoring people’s pain until it turned to anger. There is another way, he says: “Dare to commit to the dream of each other.”

The greatest failure of the modern world is that we somehow stopped listening to the pain of others and started listening only to our own pain.

Here’s the reality. Right now, we live in a tumultuous world, with technological progress moving so fast that society simply hasn’t caught up to all of the changes of the last thirty or so years yet. In roughly a generation’s time, globalism, the internet, and cell phones have completely altered the way all of us are employed, how we buy almost everything, and how we communicate.

That radical shift is changing everyone’s lives. For some people, the changes are for the better. For some, it’s for the worse.

Often, the people whose lives are getting better can’t understand the upset of people whose lives appear to be worsening. At the same time, those whose lives are worsening can’t understand the optimism of those whose lives are getting better.

Rather than trying to listen and trying to build a better future for all of us, the solution has been to isolate ourselves with like-minded folks and to simply label everyone else as “wrong” in some fashion.

That doesn’t actually fix anything. It actually makes things worse.

8. Oscar Wilde on the lives of others

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde

No matter what you’ve done, your life can be better than it is right now. At the same time, no matter how great the reputation you’ve built up, you can flush it down the tubes very quickly with just a few poor choices.

Take those two together and what do you get? You get a very, very meaningful today.

Today is the day when you get to define what your tomorrow is going to be like, for better or worse. Are you going to make it great? Or are you going to make it terrible? Are you going to spend your energy building something, whether it’s your primary path or a backup plan? Are you going to coast? Or are you going to do something foolish and tear it down?

The choice is yours, every single day. It matters not what your past was like.

9. Kio Stark on why you should talk to strangers

From the description:

“When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life — and theirs,” says Kio Stark. In this delightful talk, Stark explores the overlooked benefits of pushing past our default discomfort when it comes to strangers and embracing those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection.

You’d be surprised how often my day is made by having a conversation with a stranger, whether I’m the person starting that conversation or they are.

I’ve been overwhelmed by a kind comment from a stranger. I’ve been amazed at the insights from someone that I started conversing with out of the blue. I’ve built new friendships just because I chose to open my mouth at a key moment.

Those things only happened because I chose to talk to strangers.

Here’s a simple challenge for you: the next time you see someone on the street who’s nicely dressed or who is doing a good deed for someone, tell them. Point it out and say you appreciate it. It often starts a conversation and, even if it doesn’t, it’ll probably make that person’s day.

10. Pena Chodron on inner peace

“Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.” – Pena Chodron

It’s up to you to decide what things in your life actually influence your happiness. You decide whether things get to you. You decide whether things bring you down. You decide – no one else.

You are the gatekeeper to your own emotional state. Never, ever, ever let someone else dictate how you feel. You can choose to let someone else lift you if you’d like, but never, ever let someone else drag you down.

It’s always your decision. It’s always up to you to decide how you’re going to emotionally respond to something.

11. Corinne Bailey Rae’s Tiny Desk Concert

There are times when certain creative works just jump out and strike me out of nowhere. The paintings of Vincent van Gogh do this, as do the books of Philip K. Dick. Something about them is electric and alive in a way that many similar things just aren’t, at least for me. They’re like neon lights in a gray landscape.

Corinne Bailey Rae’s voice is like that for me. I don’t know what it is. It’s not one of those things that can be described or quantified. There’s just something about her voice that stands out like a giant bright beacon whenever she’s performing. It’s like she’s willing me to smile and feel joyous when she’s singing something upbeat or she’s willing me to feel sad when she’s singing something downbeat.

The vast majority of music tends to work best for me when I’m in the same mood as the musician. There’s just something about her where she can just will me to the mood of the song she’s singing.

Some human beings have magical voices. Corinne Bailey Rae is one of them.

12. Albert Camus on friendship

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” – Albert Camus

It sounds so simple, but it’s actually quite hard.

The post Inspiration from Andrew Sullivan, Dan Harris, Albert Camus, and More appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/2cTa1g6

Three Ways to Make Money From a Tired Old Car

By Richard Reina

Most car owners have been there before – you’ve got an outdated vehicle that has become a hassle to own and operate, and you aren’t sure what to do with it. While many drivers can’t wait to rid themselves of a dilapidated ride, don’t rush too quickly to free up garage space.

For one thing, every month you can keep your paid-off car running is one where you won’t have to take on a new car payment. But even if you’ve saved up for a new set of wheels, trading in your old car at the dealership may not be the best route. Whether you sell the car privately, dismantle it to sell off valuable parts, or buy an old car for a DIY overhaul, there are several ways to maximize an old car’s potential and to cash in before you trade in.

Sell Your Trusty Old Car Instead of Trading It In

You’ve run your car out to the bitter end and now it’s time to part ways. Trading it in at a dealership is an easy option, but selling the car yourself on the private market can earn you 15% to 25% more for it, according to Kelly Blue Book. If you want to try getting the most out of your car by selling it privately, you should be conscious of several factors.

The first question you need to ask yourself when thinking about selling your car is simple – is it an operating vehicle? If so, you can proceed forward by fixing only what is absolutely necessary and nothing more.

If you lived without an updated radio system, there’s no need to invest extra time and money in one now. Stay focused on parts that are essential to keeping the car safe and running. If you held on to service records over the years, be sure to make copies and show prospects that the car has been treated with care.

When it comes to the appearance of an old car, the details really do matter. A thorough cleaning goes a long way toward making your car presentable, so be sure to prioritize cleaning the paint, glass and upholstery. Once your car is camera-ready, take high-quality pictures that will make you stand out from unprofessional advertisements.

Finally, it’s extremely important to be forthcoming in your advertisement about the condition of your vehicle so you can be perceived as a credible, trustworthy seller. As long as it starts, runs and can pass a state safety inspection, you should be set to make the sale.

Dismantle Your Car to Sell the Parts

For cars that may not be attractive enough to sell whole, there’s still value in parts. An owner needs to have both the skill and storage space to successfully salvage parts from a broken-down car, so this option is not for the casual seller.

If you have the time and maintenance background, focus on removing valued parts such as the wheels, glass, sound system, axles, lights, trim pieces, and engine parts. If you lack experience but are determined to see some return on investment from your non-operating vehicle, it’s certainly an option to use resources online and teach yourself how to perform basic tasks.

Once you’re ready to sell, drivers can check websites like Craigslist or eBay that have sections dedicated to selling car parts. When the whole process is over, call your local salvage yard to haul away the stripped body – they may not charge you if they can sell it for scrap metal.

Buy an Old Car Cheap and Resell it for a Higher Price

Are you looking for a hobby that can make a profit? Look no further than preserving classic cars, an industry that has become increasingly popular. With some simple maintenance work and a dedication to clean everything and everywhere, an inexpensive find can be turned in to a desirable collector’s item.

To go above and beyond regular upkeep, focus on sprucing up under the hood, in the wheel wells, and in the door jambs. When your collector is ready to show, selling in-person to enthusiasts at a local car show could be the way to attract the right buyer.

Before saying goodbye to an old vehicle, be sure to consider the many different routes both buyers and sellers can pursue to make the most out of a once-prized possession.

Richard Reina is the product training director at CARiD.com and has been an auto enthusiast since the age of two, when his dad taught him the difference between a Chevy and a Ford. Since then, it’s been cars all the time. He enjoys restoring and driving old cars, with a special love for anything Italian – he currently owns a 1967 Alfa Romeo.

Related Articles:

• Why You Should Worship Your Paid-Off Car
• Best Used Cars for Simply Getting Around
• Two-Sided Coin: Should You Buy a New Car or Used Car?
• Best Car Insurance Companies

The post Three Ways to Make Money From a Tired Old Car appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/2dk8ZJe

Ask GFC 013 – How to Deal With Post-Divorce Debt

Though we sometimes think of high debt as a self-inflicted wound, that’s often not the case.

Debt is a common problem in the aftermath of divorce.

And sometimes it’s even the cause of the divorce!

So how do you deal with post-divorce debt?

This topic was inspired by an Ask GFC question from Mike:

“Jeff, Thanks for checking in. When I have a moment I will check out your website more. I am interested in paying off debt and getting my finances in better order. I recently divorced and am now dealing with an excessive amount of debt. Any suggestions on how I deal with that? I’ll check out your site for help also. -Mike”

I’ve never been divorced, but I do know a thing or two about debt, and whatever the cause, the solution is always basically the same. What complicates post-divorce debt is that it usually comes with a bunch of emotional attachments and special situations. For example, you’re stuck paying off debt that your ex-spouse helped create. Some of it may be from the huge legal costs that come with divorce. And of course, it’s a negative holdover from a failed relationship.

Those emotional attachments can get in the way, but that won’t help your cause. A good debt-payoff strategy will however, and that’s what we’re going to focus on here.

The Variables that come with Post-divorce Debt

Mike doesn’t go into any detail in regard to his divorce, but there can be special financial considerations that complicate the debt payoff process. For example, child support and alimony are frequently involved, and in almost all cases where children are in the mix. This creates an additional financial burden, one that reduces cash flow and makes paying off debt especially difficult.

I bring this up – even though Mike doesn’t – because whether or not you you pay these divorce related settlements can have a serious impact on the timing of a debt payoff strategy. Of course whether or not they matter at all depends on whether you are the custodial parent who is on the receiving end of the payments, or the noncustodial parent, who is actually making those payments.

Since the receipt of child support and alimony are not a concern for the receiving spouse, let’s focus on the impact on the spouse who makes those payments.

Child support and alimony are routinely calculated as a percentage of your income. Depending upon how many children you have, as well as the income of the custodial parent, the payments can be crippling.

According to the The Future of Children: A Collaboration of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution, “The award amount for one child is 17% of the non-custodial parent’s gross income, 25% for two children, 29% for three children, 31% for four children, and 34% for five or more children”. That’s just one of several methods used to calculate child support, and it varies from state to state.

If large child-support payments are part of your divorce, and they are taking a significant amount of your income, it will naturally take you longer to get out of debt. The monthly outgo of child support and alimony competes directly with your ability to pay your debts. You may have to settle on paying off your debts over a longer period of time, such as 10 years, versus five.

Under extreme circumstances, where child-support or alimony are particularly high, you may even have to put off your debt payoff plan until your children are emancipated, and you are no longer required to make child-support payments.

Be Sure to Continue Funding Your Retirement

This gets to a potential detour on the way to paying off debt. Divorce proceedings often include a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, commonly referred to as “QDRO”, in which retirement assets are split between the former spouses. This is very common when there is a big difference in the retirement assets of the two spouses.

For example, if one spouse has $200,000 in retirement assets, and the other has $50,000, the court will very likely level the playing field. Since one spouse has $150,000 more in retirement assets than the other, the court may order that half of it – $75,000 – be transferred to the other spouse.

There are no tax consequences to this transfer of retirement assets, but it can deplete your retirement savings if you are the paying spouse. This may be another “debt” that you will need to repay – to yourself.

It may not be practical to attempt to make up the entire difference with additional contributions, but you should plan to continue funding your retirement while you’re trying to get out of debt.

It’s especially important to continue funding retirement because one day your child support and alimony payments will end, and your debt will disappear. And when it does, you’ll need to have something waiting for you on the other end.

Though it may be tempting to eliminate retirement contributions and throwing all of your extra money at debt, doing so could leave you unprepared for retirement. This is an especially important consideration if you will be fairly close to retirement age by the time your children are grown, and time to prepare for retirement is short.

It’s a tough balancing act, but you should be intentional about continuing to fund your retirement while you pay off your debt.

Now, About Paying Off those Debts…

I know – it seemed like we would never get to this point! But paying off post-divorce debt is a much more complicated process. After you get done paying child support or alimony, and funding your retirement, what’s left to pay off debt? After all, you still have to live your own life too, and that will bring a whole other batch of expenses with it.

This is why I suggested earlier that having a longer term debt payoff horizon may be required. Unless you are a high income earner, and can live on a very small percentage of it, it will be a serious balancing act to cover all of your financial obligations. (Like I have to tell you that if you’re already divorced!)

In this scenario, you can envision four separate financial obligations in order of importance, in which paying off debt is dead last:

1. Paying child support or alimony (if you don’t do this you could end up in jail),
2. Funding your retirement plan (if you don’t do this you could end up broke),
3. Paying for your own living expenses, and finally
4. Paying off debt

That may leave little for the debt payoff effort. This is why getting out of debt after a divorce really is a long-term process. But ultimately time will be on your side. Here’s what I mean…

If you’re fresh out of divorce court, it may be all you can do to meet the minimum monthly payments on your debts. As time goes on, and you are better able to manage cash flow, you can begin paying more than the minimum on each debt. You can also consider using a debt payoff strategy, such as the debt snowball, in which you pay off your smallest debt first, then move on to the next smallest debt, until all debts are finally paid.

But you may also find that you are unable to get completely out of debt while you are paying child support or alimony. If that’s the case, the best strategy is to work at minimizing your debts, until the support payments end, and then you can put all of your extra cash on the debts.

A good strategy at that point will be to make additional payments on your debts that are equivalent to what your child support or alimony payments were. That should enable you to get out of debt pretty quickly after the support payments end.

Notice I didn’t mention some of the usual debt “solutions”, like doing a debt consolidation or taking out  a home equity line of credit? There are good reasons why I didn’t. Both are really a matter of moving debt from one pile to another without ever paying it off. And often times a house is lost in a divorce so there is no security for the home equity line. You could get a loan from family, but do you really want to do that, knowing you may not be able to repay the money for many years?

Getting out of debt is tough enough under ordinary circumstances. But trying to get out of debt after a divorce can be seriously complicated. Mike, my advice is to settle on a strategy, and develop a large helping of patience. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen – if you’re committed to the long-term.

Source Good Financial Cents http://ift.tt/2dzeNO6