The site is still invitation only.<p>Here's a little plan I came up with for someone, not quite 100% applicable but it worked pretty good:<p>(1) cut up your cards<p>Tough ? Yes, absolutely, very tough. But step one of getting out of a hole is to stop digging, so stop spending money that you don't have.<p>(2) cancel: cable, newspapers, any and all subscriptions, internet and cell phone included if you don't need them for your job. If you do need internet see if you can make a deal with a neighbour, especially easy if you have a laptop with wifi.<p>These are <i>not</i> essentials in your life, you can do without them until you can afford them.<p>(3) stop smoking, stop drinking<p>Besides making you unhealthy this stuff is habit forming and costs you a bundle, even if you don't really notice because it's only a few bucks at the time.<p>(4) if you've bought stuff that you don't actually need, sell it. Liquidate it, set a price on what you realistically think it is worth and try to raise that money by selling it for cash.<p>(5) stop eating and drinking outdoors. Restaurants and coffee shops make a profit, that means that you can cook for yourself and make your own beverages cheaper. Sure, it may not be that luxury latte that you've come to depend on but it adds up.<p>(6) pursue ways in which you can earn more than you do today (this can be hard, it did not work out for my friend, maybe you have more luck)<p>(7) list each and every expense you make, look at the list at the end of the week and be critical, could you have saved on any of them? If you could do not repeat that spending in the next week!<p>All these steps together should give you a bit of money on a repetitive basis that should go towards paying off your debt.<p>That's cumulative, any money that you spend over and beyond the required interest payments will come back the next month as a further reduction in interest to be paid. So next month you can pay back more on the principal and so on.<p>Do not fall back in to old habits, be strong and look at your debt decreasing as a motivator.<p>--<p>I'm really happy that the 'readyforzero' people built this. That's one of the nicest start-ups ever to come out of YC, in terms of the 'change the world' attitude.
I'm all for any ideas that can help America get out of debt. It's also great to see someone step in and fill in the hole that MS Money left (it had a fantastic debt wizard/planner, I was sad when MS announced they are killing it, despite how buggy the app always was).<p>I do wonder if this site can really reach the market it's after. In my anecdotal experience, the people that are in massive debt don't really have the discipline or organization to get out of it, even with a great tool to help them. If they did, they probably wouldn't be in as much debt to begin with.
I'm really glad to see this. I'd say it could count as a public service as well. What I hope the site will also offer is counseling on developing better spending habits in addition to the tracking/organizing of repayments. The crowd that visits HN is probably already pretty wary of the credit card game/trap, but too many Americans get pulled underneath unmanageable debt burdens before they really know what's happening.<p>I had a neighbor who had simple, yet fantastic advice: if you can't afford to pay for it cash, don't buy it. This guy was your average American, with a middle class job, but during his retirement years I noticed he bought a new porsche and humongous RV. I have to wonder if he bought those cash too, but I wouldn't be surprised. He had rental property, all his debts paid off I'm pretty sure, and all because of simple yet powerful financial common sense.<p>It actually angers me to see some of the interest rate schemes and fees banks deliberately put in place to take advantage of unsuspecting debtors. A site like ReadyForZero is timely in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. If 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending, it make sense to strive to keep Americans in a position to spend comfortably.
That's really good! I'd like an app that will help repay my mortgage quicker, coming with plans etc.<p>Also I can't help but notice that techcrunch is basically an advertising platform for pretty much anything YC funded.<p>It's like if you get funded, you get something that floats, boom, you're on techcrunch.<p>I'd even say that a feature article on TC would help more than the original funding...