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Anyone can dig themselves out of debt and build a safety net of financial assets by following some simple rules. I know, because I was more than $50K in debt less than two years ago and now debt-free and growing my savings - even in these bad economic times and on a military salary.

There are a few basic truths about creating wealth that never change. One of the most important ones is to spend less money than you make. Another is to take what you haven't spent and do something profitable with it. This sounds simple, but is realistic when times get tough and money seems to be stretched thin? My answer is, Yes! And I know this from experience as someone who struggled with debt for many years and finally got fed up and did something about it.

So, let's start with the basics. Most financial experts will tell you that you have to do a budget and figure out all your expenses and track every penny you spend for a period of time so that you can assess what you need to do to correct it. I can tell you that when I was nearly $50,000 in the hole due to multiple credit cards, a car loan and other various loans I owed, I absolutely hated the idea of sitting down and figuring out where every penny was going. I'd sit down to do it and my eyes would glaze over and I'd suddenly think of a dozen other places I needed to be. Painful!

What I finally did was this: First, I stopped using my credit cards. I cut up all but one and put that one in my desk drawer instead of my wallet. Next, I made two columns on a piece of paper. On the left was my income, on the right, my debts. Then I looked at what my minimum payments were on each of the loans. I then set up automatic payments using my online checking account that would come out automatically each payday. This gave me the peace of mind of knowing that I would not default or be late on anything. After about a month I had a good idea of how much was left over when all the payments were made. So, I made sure to leave a bit of padding in my account for unexpected expenses and put the extra toward the credit card with the smallest balance. In my case the smallest balance was about $4,500.

Every time I saw that there was a little bit extra in the checking I'd make an extra payment to the credit card. I was pleasantly surprised that before long that credit card was almost paid off! A few months later I got my income tax return and completely paid off that credit card. This is where it all starts to get exciting! Once I had one paid

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