"Pain = Intensity"

Pain is a good thing. It's God's way of getting our attention. If you are as dense as me then you need a lot of it to change. Like they say in the 12 step recovery groups, "Until the acid of your pain eats through the wall of your denial, you will not change." I see FPU as financial recovery group. My wife and I have certainly felt the pain of our dumb financial mistakes. Like Dave says we have done stupid with zeros on the end of it.

So we are intense about getting out of debt because we have felt the pain. Debt hurts. Then why are so many people still walking around with crushing debt? How come our friends and relatives don't get it when we tell them we are working to be debt free? Not enough pain. You have to "hit bottom" before you get it in most cases. Or, as God tends to do, he brings the bottom up and hits you. Because if you wait to hit bottom with debt it may be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I find the best way to get people I know out of denial is not by telling them how messed up they are, but by telling them how messed up I was (and still am). We have lost over $40,000 over the years by leasing our cars. Dumb. We took a lot of vacations that cost over $6,000 a week. dumb, dumb. I could go on, but I'm crying too hard. Made any mistakes?