EXCLUSIVE: Extract from Getting Out of Debt Joyfully
You’ve probably read the incredibly helpful advice of Simone Milasas in Mamamia already — but the secrets of Getting Out Of Debt Joyfully don’t end at, “Take time out of your day to look at the piles of gold in your safe” and “Don’t pay your bills — it just encourages them”. There are many more brilliant tips in this seminal work of fiscal solvency. Read this tasty extract for example:
“A lot of people come up to me at my seminars and say to me, Simone, I would like to follow your advice, but I’m finding it difficult because every time I try to put ten percent of my income into a special bank account, I make a calculating error and end up accidentally buying food instead. How can I stop myself buying food?
These people always have one thing in common: they have incredibly greasy fingers. I notice how greasy they are when they wipe them on my face. To them I say, what’s more fun: buying food, or laughing hysterically while lying in a pit of diamonds? The universe will know if you buy food that you are prioritising your small intestine over your impenetrable subterranean vault, and that’s the sort of thing that pisses the universe off. Every time you buy food, the universe will respond by killing one of your most beloved pets. So next time you’re thinking of taking ten percent of your income and buying a loaf of bread, do what I do: climb to the top of a tall building and hurl coins at the people below.
When I give people this advice, they get a wonderful smile on their face, a weight seems to lift from their shoulders, and they wander happily into traffic. I am glad I can give them financial security in this way.
You see, money is all about energy. When I was $187,000 in debt, it was because I had bad energy. Every month, the bank would ring me and scold me about my bad energy. ‘We have to raise interest rates again, Simone,’ they would say. ‘Because of your energy’. But when I started having good energy, the bank started to ring me with a very different message: now they were telling me that my debts were rapidly decreasing and they didn’t know why. ‘The numbers keep going down on the screen and we’re not even touching the computer!’ they would scream. ‘Oh god what’s happening?’ There was no special trick to it — it was just energy. The universe was responding to my energy because I had decided it would be more fun to pay off my debts than do what I usually did with my paycheck: shove it down my underpants and ride a horse.
The funny thing is, I paid off all my debts by saving ten percent of my income in my special ten percent account, and then refusing to use that account to pay off my debts. This is the best way to pay off debts, because the thing about debts is they respect strength. As soon as you start paying them off, they despise you, and they increase just to teach you a lesson. But when they see that you’re not paying them off, your debts will smile and nod knowingly, and murmur, ‘Yes. She gets it.’ And they will start to decrease, as a mark of admiration for your courage.
Now I will teach you how to make your own two-dollar coins out of old rags and dead birds that your cat left on the doormat. These are legal tender in all states except South Australia, where money doesn’t exist and you can only pay for things with songs. See the diagram over the page.”
