• the Interest Savings Queen (interest in you? not saving that; I have lots of interest in you!)
• the Mortgage Savings Queen (catchy, but I don't do mortgages so don't call me for a cheap one)
• the Mortgage Riches Queen (I like the positive sound of this; people would rather be rich than save - get money instead of not spending money)
• then there's the Financial Literacy Queen (Suze Orman might have this sewed up, but the little I know is better than what I've heard her say. We do have a lot in common, however.)

Why pick a name for myself? So I can reach more people. I am an authority on mortgage acceleration and using your house to pay for your house. I've been doing it on my own home long before most of the companies selling software to help you do it were even a twinkle in their papa's eye.

I've been recycling my own money for about five years. Spend it to make a house payment. Pull it out of the house and make another house payment. Pull it out again and pay other bills. (Cool, eh?)

Maybe I should go for the Green Money Queen. What do you think?

Equity cycling is the technique I used to cancel nearly $70,000 mortgage interest in only two years - not counting my regular payments. I've continued to use the technique since then and teach it to hundreds of others.

Equity cycling is simply using your home equity in a revolving manner to…

1. hold on to your monthly income longer
2. move chunks of money where they're most advantageous to you
3. take advantage of the velocity of money by applying larger amounts of cash to your mortgage principal or other debts
4. maintain liquidity so you have access to instant cash for emergencies

Cycling equity can also be used to quickly pay down any type of interest-bearing debt. Any time you avoid interest payments, you're saving money. Benjamin Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned." What about "a penny not spent"? Sounds like 2¢ to me!

Debt-free persons are able to use equity cycling to advance their investments.

If Equity Cycling is new to you, look into it. Better yet, attend one of our upcoming webinars to learn how to use equity for a debt-free lifestyle - the basis of building wealth.

I can't tell you how many clients I have who are $50,000 in debt - or more - besides their homes and investment properties.

Get out of debt, people, as fast as you can, while you can. While you have a job. While the dollar is worth what it is. We're coming into the holiday season now, but remember, Thanksgiving and Christmas are just days…they aren't whole seasons…three months of indulgent spending! I'm not suggesting you skip anything you need, but do not go to excess. (You may not need to buy new dishes to serve your holiday meals.) Focus on essentials.

And if you do feel indulgent, please contribute to your local food bank. People who've not asked for a handout in 55 years are lining up at food banks for help. Locally, they tell me they need staples like cereals, peanut butter and tuna. And they all anticipate being dozens short on turkeys this year. Call your local food bank first if you want to, but I think they'd love it if you buy the two you can get on sale extra cheap and drop them off with some canned goods.

The 80s decade of me-me-me and indulgence is over. The dance like it's 1999 decade is over. It's time to get our own houses in order and stretch a little to help people around us.

Please pass this message on.

PS: If you'd like a free demo of mortgage and debt elimination software, please email me. We'll connect you to a mortgage acceleration agent.

Credit is tighter, to be sure. In order to borrow money for a home these days you'l need a decent credit score and a down payment, probably 20%. That's the way it was before the foxes started guarding the henhouses. People saved up for years to buy a home. Maybe their parents pitched in some money to help with the down payment.

Unfortunately, in the last few years 80/20 or 80/10/10 home loans became popular. That simply means you borrow 80% of the price of the house for the regular mortgage, nothing unusual there, then borrow 20% to make the down payment so you will qualify for the 80% you just borrow. Or instead of one 20% loan, you might have two 10% loans.

Any way you slice it, that's 100% financing. People who got those loans thought their mortgage broker was very clever. "Out-foxing the system."

Why did lenders used to require 20% down? So you wouldn't be tempted to walk away and leave your $80,000 there if things got tough! Over a million buyers have walked away in the last year, either willingly or unwillingkly. About 1.2 million homes are in foreclosure.

So when people call and ask, "Will I be able to get a HELOC to do the equity cycling thing you talk about?" my answer is simple. "If you have good credit, and equity in your home, there should be no problem." (One other consideration is total debt load.)

What the collective consciousness seems to have forgotten is that not everyone has bad credit. Not everyone is over-extended. Not everyone in the middle class has three cars, a truck and a motorcycle. About a third of homeowners own their homes free and clear. And the percentage of people who want to be debt free, including free from mortgage debt, is growing.

They'll have perfect credit and no debt.

Are you thinking that advice would have been more valuable in the have-it-all eighties? Or the looking toward the millennium 90s? Or even the early years of the whew-we-made-it-to-the-21st-century?

You can't unspend what you've already spent. You can, however, stop spending. I read recently about people experimenting with going an entire month without purchasing anything. Eat the canned goods you have stashed about. Carpool. Skip the movies. As I recall, it quit being fun after about a week. Day 11 had a come-to-jesus moment.

But today's blog is about getting out of debt, that elusive "get-out-of-debt-free card" we'd all like to find. Sure, it will cost us something to get out of debt. We might have to pay our bills. But if we pay them quickly, we will save thousands and thousands of dollars.

I coached a young couple yesterday as they put into place an aggressive payment schedule. They'll save a million dollars. Furthermore, if after they are out of debt, they keep making payments, but to themselves or modest investments, they'll have a million dollars saved up by the time they would have gotten out of debt had they not stepped up the pace. That's a difference of two million dollars! That's better than free; that's a plan that pays!

Have you already made changes to your budget, your spending, your debt payment strategy? Are you paying off your mortgage, too? You know the faster you do that, the faster you can start saving for anything you'd rather spend your money on than mortgage interest!

Let me hear from you about what you've done and what you've planned. We can do this thing!

Why should we think positively about the economy? Will happy thoughts put more money in the bank, pay our homes sooner, restore our retirement portfolios?

Maybe.

I just read an excerpt from Robert Shiller's The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It . In describing how we got into this mess, he brought up a concept Alan Greenspan didn't put much credence in, but which turned out to be a critical factor in the real estate bubble and the resulting financial collapse.

Social Contagion

"Certain ideas infect a few people, then others, who continue to spread them. By the time most people are infected, the infection seems normal, and those who are not infected seem odd. Everyone who is infected thinks along the same lines. News channels feature the same kinds of stories and the people who offer opinions all seem to share the same assumptions. Thanks to social contagion, these ideas become "truth," not because they have withstood rigorous analysis, but because everyone accepts them as true."

Shiller faults economists (and bankers) for not recognizing the social epidemic of "everyone should be able to buy a home," "real estate will always go up," "let's get on this bandwagon now," etc. You know. You were around during the last 5-10 years. What did you see and hear? What were your friends saying around the water cooler?

Perhaps it was partly the euphoria of living through the change of the decade-century-millennium all at once. The ATM machines still worked, so what could go wrong? Time to celebrate, rejoice, dance, buy a house, buy another…

Why can't we turn that around? Some colleagues and I were talking about joy a few weeks ago. Do we experience joy in our work? We're all doing things we chose to do. Are we allowing ourselves to get so busy doing them that we forget the joy? Same with our outlook on clients, responsibilities, life in general, and of course the economy.

I have a long-held belief that what you focus on expands. When you're watching your money, it grows. When you aren't, it slips away. When you're watching what you lack, or the bad economy or your crumbling portfolio, you get more of that. More lack. More loss. More crumbling.

The real trick is to be so full of happiness, joy, lightness, energy, love - whatever - that it spills over to those around you. Make someone's day. Maybe they'll make someone else's day. Can we create a contagion of optimism while still being realistic about what we need to do?

I think so. My partner and I have cut back. We rarely go out to eat anymore, and that used to be an at-least-once-a-week activity (and my waist showed it!). We're enjoying being healthier, cooking at home, playing Scrabble afterwards. We've not bought new clothes. We drive less (except for 2000 miles last month visiting national parks and monuments — peaceful, regenerating…). Not only are we not suffering, we're enjoying our lives and each other even more.

Why? Because we chose to. We've always floated on the financial waves. When money's up, we ride higher. When it's down, we settle in. You can do it, too. Step outside with your family at sunset and each say something you're grateful for. Focus on what you have, not what you don't have.

Will you promise to infect at least one person with a smile, a laugh, joy, happiness — anything positive? I give you 24 hours. Wait. you've already been given this day. That's something to shout about right there! Pass it on!