35 with $484K in Debt and a Plan!

$484K in debt and a plan. My name is Jerry Banfield and I have $484K in debt right now at 35 years old. This post is my plan to erase the debt along with my experience as to how I got in this much debt.

I hope this will be really useful for you if you are in debt yourself and looking for some hope.

I'd love to hear your story on the blog/video. Please share a comment and tell me where you're at today so we can help each other.

If you want to see as the debt drops, subscribe to my YouTube channel and you will love following the journey that we go on together showing you how I have faith and what actions I take to get out of $484K in debt and a plan.

First, in this post, we'll do the following:

My story: How did I get this far into debt from $0 in debt at age 18? How much are my monthly payments? What's my credit history? What are the interest rates?

I'll show you all of that because you're getting debt-free, a key part of the process is getting transparent, talking, and asking for help. Right now, I have $484K in debt and a plan.

I'm leading by example here and this is what really works. I will show you the ways out. What I'm doing here is part of the way out by just getting honest, being open about this and asking for advice.

If you've got any suggestions, please leave a comment. I am valuing your opinion and whatever you think I can do. That's how I've been able to have faith and certainty that there is a way out.

What I'm most proud of in regards to all this debt is that for the last 13 years, I've made 100% of my payments on time. $484K in debt and a plan.

I've never missed and do not intend on missing any payments for my debt. $484K in debt and a plan. I honor my agreements and I think it's important if you're going to borrow money to pay it back.

What are the 3 steps to freedom that I am taking myself in this post and committing to you going forward?

#1 is Taking Inventory.
I did not realize how much debt I had until about an hour ago when I went and added all this up.

#2 is to Ask For Advice
Asking for advice instead of asking for money is one of the top lessons I've learned out of this.

#3 is to Get Into Action.
Just sitting around, praying, and asking people for advice is not going to fix it. Fixing it involves taking some action and this post is a part of my action.

Let's look at the story here as to how I got into this position which I hope you can relate to and it will be interesting to leave you feeling better with a little bit of hope if you are thinking your debt situation is hopeless.

$484K in debt and a plan.

Also, there's a blog I recently made that will help you know How to Succeed at Everything Online!

At 18 years old, I graduated high school debt-free, only operating in cash, no credit cards and I followed advice from other people. My parents, family, and friends said, “Go to college. You've got to go to college”.

My parents said I had to move out and go to college. I found scholarships in financial aid but they weren't enough to cover everything. Therefore, I started borrowing student loans. I bought very conservatively and did everything I could to reduce the amount of money I spent in college.

I lived broke, ate broke and was all a part of that. I didn't have any money or lifestyle and I graduated from USC in South Carolina with $22,000 in student loan debt. I ended up risking my life as a correction officer for $10 an hour and racking up some credit card debt.

After getting in and out of that I became a police officer, leveled up my earnings, went kind of crazy, quit my job, moved home with my parents and went to graduate school because I thought, “Well if I really want to earn better money, I need more schooling”.

$484K in debt and a plan. I borrowed more money to go to graduate school and I also started my business online. When I was 28 years old, I graduated with a master's degree from USF in South Florida and Tampa.

I took out more student loans and I dropped out of my Ph.D. program including quitting my job that was making the only money I was getting consistently because my business was not profitable.

I quit following my dreams to build a business online with mounting student loans and credit card debt. Right now, I have $484K in debt and a plan.

As I got to 30 years old, life started to look pretty hopeless for me both personally in terms of my marriage, health, business, and my relationships. Everything I cared about was falling apart.

That's when out of desperation I prayed to God to do anything to get sober which I could see was my biggest problem. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous after the thought came that “That’d be a part of anything” and I started to get my life together across the board.

What I saw is that if I didn't stop thinking long-term, if I didn't keep focusing on making money today and instead switched my thinking to the long-term, I could make some passive income.

You can also read the blog Fastest Path To Full Time Income Online or watch the video below.

What I'd been doing with my business was just hustling and getting clients. I'm always focusing on how much money I can make this month and what I saw is that if I could teach online courses, I'd had a lot of validation on that already and some potential.

I saw an opportunity to transform my life as I've never seen it. Thus, at 30 years old, I had $150,000 in debt including student loans, credit card debt, and personal loans. I finally got out of transforming my personal life by praying, getting very inspired, and starting to meditate.

I focused on making a long-term plan which was to teach courses online. I bought all the money I could get my hands on so that I could sit down and take the time to film all the online courses.

I did not make any money in the beginning and spent a whole bunch of money to advertise those courses and literally, when I spent about the last dollar I borrowed, the money started to come in. $484K in debt and a plan.

Over the next 4 years, I created 5,000 or so videos online with over 3,000 online courses and I used the money I made to pay down the debt, buy a car, buy a house and to pay most of the bills for that time.

I also did some crypto investing which ended up getting me into burnout. I went so crazy with all the stuff I was doing. I hustled and worked so hard that in 2018, I got burnt out.

I took a year off for paternity leave for the birth of my son, to stop making online courses, stop pitching cryptos, just have some fun, mess around, make some music, and play some video games. I had a lot of fun at that time.

Where To Focus?

However, there was one key problem and it's "Where to focus?". I was going to show you this later in the post but I'm just so excited. This is very important and this is a huge thing if you want to get out of debt and make money, especially if you're an entrepreneur online, this “Where to focus?” graph is essential.

As an entrepreneur online, I don't get paid time off. I've got to set up business systems that are so good. I can afford to work less at various times but the one thing I do not get to do is deviate from my primary income sources for very long and this is what I did for about a year.

I just dropped all my primary income sources. The number one revenue generator needs to be getting 70% of the time, energy, and attention per year. $484K in debt and a plan.

I got these numbers from some Google presentation that the CEO Eric Schmidt in a podcast gave me and I found these exactly match to what I need to do.

I dropped this and all I was focusing on were the other areas. I was focusing on potential growth areas like playing video games and music streaming.

These were potential growth areas. Music will qualify more as an experiment. I spent all my time and energy on potential growth and experiments. $484K in debt and a plan.

The idea with this is for maximum return, you need to focus most of your energy and time on the places that are earning the most money. You've then got free time to explore other areas but if you drop the 70%, everything is likely to get into the situation I'm about to show you.

In 2019, I started Uthena in an effort to make a continuing education platform. This was the consistent advice I had gotten from followers to make an online education platform and make your own version of Udemy.

You can take a look at the homepage here. The main value propositions we have are course bundles and a comprehensive continuing education program for entrepreneurs online.

$484K in debt and a plan. We have 505 courses for $9.81 a month and I've got a Partner Program which is a membership program for $48 a month where I've got private label rights to my courses. I've got coaching, group calls, a private Facebook group, etc.

This is a must-read eLearning Networking, Webinars, Mastermind, Coaching — Earn More on Udemy, Skillshare, Thinkific!

That's what I've poured my time and energy into starting this in 2019. This has been a huge learning opportunity. This has been how I've racked up a massive amount of debt getting this started. $484K in debt and a plan.

I'll show you some of the key points to racking this up.

In January 2019, before I started Uthena, it was the worst in sales I'd seen since 2014. For the first time in years, I started spending more money than I was earning and this was a very subtle and quick thing that happened.

All of a sudden, I was spending in cash and very quickly I was spending on credit.

Uthena’s start-up cost was much bigger and took a lot longer than I thought it would and my fear and anger started to go wild for the first time in years. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating. I felt like I had to go to work at 3:00 in the morning. I was crazy about my finances.

All kinds of stories went around in my head like “They did this to me”. If Udemy hadn't suspended my account in 2016 and messed up my whole business when I had everything set up perfectly then this wouldn't have happened.

I wouldn't be in this position. I started to lose my belief. If you look at one of my income reports before, I started to lose my belief in myself and in your ability to help me. $484K in debt and a plan.

I considered very recently selling my business and literally quitting using money at all. I came to that after having a breakdown about making this post’s video. I was praying and asking for guidance and thinking “What's the very best video I can make?”.

What video can I make that makes a huge difference in your life and the thought came is “Why don't you tell them about your debt and all your financial struggles you've had this year” and I'm like “No. Not that. I'll tell people what I've learned about how to make money, not my debt, not this”.

On that day, I decided “Okay, I'm going to do this $484K in debt and a plan video and show everybody in clear detail what's going on and my whole process”.

I had a breakdown. I went crazy. I'm like, “I'm not using money. I'm done. I'm done using money. I hate money. Money is stupid. I'm not playing this game anymore. I'm just gonna close all of my accounts and be done with it”.

My wife listened through that idea. She was very understanding and then like 2 hours later, I'm like, “Okay, it's gonna be fine” but here are the key lessons I've learned and then I'll show you exactly how much the debt is, the interest and my plan out.

Slow Down
The key lesson that I've learned is to slow down.

$484K in debt and a plan. Thinking short-term got me into debt every time. Even thinking about going to college was really short-term thinking. I wasn't considering my entire life and that if I really wanted to make money, I might need to just learn some life skills.

To get networking and connected with employers instead of just generically throwing myself into school and hoping for the best and borrowing money to make that happen and taking 4 years of not working that much.

First Things First
Never drop those 70% areas unless you're willing to do so without the money that those provide.

That means limit experiments and new opportunities to the minority of time and perhaps most important is to “Ask for Advice”. I just blundered into this borrowing money and I didn't ask for advice.

Ask For Advice
I googled, looked and tried to do it myself and here's an example of “Where asking for advice would have been really helpful?” I hope this is helpful for you. I may have caught you before you've gone as far into this as I have.

I had an over 800 credit score at the beginning of the year. When I was operating completely, I only had those little bits of student loan debt, making the payments had wide-open credit, and then I started applying to things like 0% interest credit cards.

$484K in Debt and a Plan

I got one for $20,000 at 0% interest and I kept applying for these cards. They gave me the first one. So, I applied for another one. I have another one for $10,000 at 0% interest. So, I applied for more. Then they started rejecting it. My credit score went down as I used more of my score up.

At the beginning of 2019, I was perfectly qualified for something like a Small Business Administration loan or a personal loan. I could have got a hundred or two hundred thousand I estimate at 7% interest.

Instead, I blundered my way through just borrowing a little bit at a time, opening up new credit cards, not asking for advice until now I am in the position. 28% interest was the last offer I got and the current offer I'm getting is 28% interest. It is only reasonable as a very last resort.

Therefore, you might want to see as you've watched this far “Well, how much debt do you have?”. This is the total debt I had in November 2019. I did not know about this until an hour or so ago. I think a key step if we want to get out of debt is to look at it.

$484K in debt and a plan. I hadn't looked at my debt. I just had these vague estimations by “Why look at all the statements? I just have the payments on time and I won't look at all”. This is what it looks like.