Every January brings a slew of resolutions involving diets and personal finance -- and new books to help steel our resolve.
Local "Pocket Your Dollars" blogger Carrie Rocha is the latest to tread on ground worn down by Suze Orman, Mary Hunt and Dave Ramsey, who have written extensively about getting and staying out of debt.
What makes Rocha's book unique isn't Orman's bossy scolding or Hunt's traditional plan of spending less than you make. It digs into our attitudes about money and how those attitudes can quickly crumble any New Year's resolution to spend less and save more.
"My book is the prequel that comes before the one about the six steps to financial freedom," she said.
Rocha, 37, who lives in Maple Grove with her husband and two daughters, walks the walk and talks the talk as a person who was once $50,000 in debt from student and car loans and taxes.
After numerous attempts to get out of debt with budgets and temporary spending freezes, Rocha and her husband took a stand against their debt in 2006. Thirty months later, they had paid off all of their non-mortgage debt.
Rocha identified the excuses and found recurring themes that were keeping them in a debt hole: If I only had more money; I deserve a treat; I can avoid unexpected expenses, and buying nice things makes me happy.
Like many people who hope that a raise, an inheritance or a tax refund will finally put them on the path to getting out of debt, Rocha's first step was to quit focusing on the lack of money that blinded her and her husband to their own overspending, underplanning, overborrowing and undersaving behaviors.
