I am not an expert on this and I am following a lot of advice from different mentors and advisers whom I trust but I cannot disagree on the fact that the first way to move forward is to eliminate debt.
Most people would say that debt is unavoidable. That is true. My family and I accumulated lots of debt when my dad passed away. But after 8 months (from the day of accumulating it and until the day of the last payment), I am happy to say that we are debt-free! Yehey!
From what I learned, these are the habits that I've formed to eliminate debt:
1) Small debts are unavoidable. But if I can, I usually try to settle it within 3 days.
2) If the need of money is not matter between life and death, I don't borrow money.
3) Whenever I received my salary, I set aside a bigger amount for the payment of debt than my remittance to my mom (Communication is the key as well!). We have to sacrifice first so that we can finish it as early as we can.
4) I don't consider accumulating more. :)
Sure, there are lots of ways to avoid it and eliminate it. But these habits helped me a lot even though it is really hard to survive especially with my current salary. But no pain, no gain.
