TWENTY-FOUR MONTHS

Nobody plans to owe money to strangers. Debt arrives the way water arrives in a boat - a little through this seam, a little through that one, each entry small enough to ignore, until one day you notice you are standing in it.

In more than twenty-five years of practicing law, particularly in family and civil matters, I have watched debt enter cases wearing names that had nothing to do with money. The file might say divorce, custody, child support, inheritance, breach of contract, or domestic conflict, but very often an economic problem was sitting quietly at the table with us. Financial difficulties continue to be among the most powerful sources of marital conflict in Costa Rica, as they are in families throughout the world. They may not always appear in the court file as the formal reason a marriage ended, but after decades of sitting across from husbands, wives, parents, and children in crisis, I have seen how often money is somewhere underneath the fracture.

Here is the whole plan in one paragraph, so you know what you are agreeing to. You will calculate a single number - what you owe, plus what you want in the bank - and divide it across twenty-four months. You will build a working day of roughly twelve hours: four of deep, difficult, valuable work; five of skilled execution that produces reliable income; three of batched logistics. The income pays the debt down on a strict order of operations, moved by standing orders you set once and never revisit. The deep work builds something that can outlast the debt - a skill, a body of published work, a product, an audience - so that when month twenty-five arrives, you are not merely at zero. You will protect the machine that does all this - your body - with sleep you do not negotiate, food you have tested, movement you do not skip, and an evening that actually ends. And on a date you will write down before you finish Part One, you will stop.

Twenty-four months. A number and a date. Let us go find out what yours are.