My Debt Journey

I know I am not alone, but I have always felt so isolated in my debt journey. I’ve shared a little here with you, but money is not something I feel really comfortable talking about, but I’d like to be. I told you about the time a year and a half ago I paid down about $12k in credit card debt in 4 months!! We had just sold our house and were living in a low cost situation while I was still making six figures. It was a HUGE win!! I also told you about the time about a year ago, we had just bought a house, I was gung-ho on all kinds of projects, working two part time jobs and running my business and one of those jobs let me go. Credit cards were there for me when I wanted to continue work on my home and live the lifestyle I was living while making a much higher wage.

Currently, I am in a much better place that I once was, but still have a ways to go. And to understand where I am today, I want to give you a little backstory about where I’ve been and my relationship with money. Growing up my parents always seemed to be fighting about money, but never seemed to be discussing rationally. I never heard them talking about a budget or savings or investments and they certainly never discussed any of these topics with us kids. My mom always worked full time and she controlled the finances and my dad worked his butt off, to the tune of 60+ hour weeks and yet never seemed comfortable and relaxed about our family’s money situation.

We were a middle class family that took vacations (mostly in a car), got a swimming pool (above ground) when we were young and my parents were able to pay a hefty bill for me to be a competitive gymnast, obviously we either were doing pretty well, or my parents were racking up a mountain of debt. If I needed something my parents gave it to me, and most of the time if I wanted something, they found a way to give me that too. They also invested in college for my two brothers and I early and we were able to come out of undergrad mostly debt free. I had some student loans that covered my study abroad trip.

I can see so clearly that my relationship to money was 100% shaped by my parents. I am the same way with money as my parents were. If I want something I buy it. If my kids want something I give it to them, sometimes we have enough in the account to cover it and sometimes I put things on credit cards. That is how I have been living life and looking at finances for my adult life. And certainly the reason why I am not living the debt-free life at 36.

When I graduated college I moved to New York City with a few thousand dollars and a $10/hour internship. I was the definition of young, fabulous and broke. I was lucky enough to get hired by the company I interned for and kept my job through the recession. I started off making $35k/year, with a heafty $1,250/month rent. I might have been able to make it work if I ate ramen noodles and sat home on Saturday nights, but that wasn’t the life I wanted to live in New York City. So the debt started. I opened store credit cards, bought clothes, went to dinner, occasionally asked my mom for money.

A few years into my life in New York City, my now husband, moved in with me. Cheaper rent, a significant pay increase and a friend introducing me to zero percent balance transfer allowed me to get my debt somewhat under control. But then my boyfriend proposed to me and we had a wedding to pay for. Kyle had some money saved that we set aside for the wedding, but I opened a credit card with really good travel rewards to start banking for our honeymoon. I ended up paying for a nice chunk of our plane tickets with the points, but of course I incurred more debt too.

After the wedding we paid pretty much all the new debt off with the gifts we received. But in the next year and a half we would travel to South Africa, lease a car and move out of our one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom house. Hello new furniture! And the next five years of our life went pretty much like that. Have a win, pay down a few grand, move into a new house, take a big vacation or have a baby and add a couple grand.

And here we are, with about $10,000 in credit card debt, sick of the burden, but also not wanting to give up the fun things in life. I’m ready! Before the end of 2020, I want to write a post telling you that I’ve paid them off!

Do you have a money goal? Tell me about it! Let’s hold each other accountable.

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