I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I'm so happy about this and I wanted to share.
So, from the moment I got my first credit card at 18, I carried a full balance on my cards. I always got them with the intention of paying off full balances every month, but that never happened. The only card I ever paid off (and immediately closed), it took me literally months to pay off a $200 balance. As of October 2016, I had roughly $7,000 of credit card debt and absolutely $0 in savings. I have been religiously budgeting (YNAB) since April 2015, but all that had done was change that, instead of relying on credit cards to pay bills and dealing with my electricity being shut off on at least one occasion due to three months of non-payment (very ashamed of that still), I was successfully living month-to-month with no hiccups.
In November, I decided that, once and for all, I was going to get my finances in gear. I’ve put myself on a very tight budget. Thanks to having over a year’s worth of spending data, I knew what areas I needed to cut down on. I know it’s a bit backwards, but I wanted to pay down my cards before I started really saving, just because it’s been nearly a decade of feeling crushed by debt. I felt I needed to start there for my mental sanity.
I allowed myself $100 a month of fun money (a very drastic cut), I stopped over-spending on Christmas and went with cheaper, but much more time-intensive and sentimental presents which were a huge success, and I stopped eating out 15+ times a month. (I go out maybe once a week, no alcoholic beverages – those are “fun money”). I got rid of cable and Amazon Prime, only keeping Netflix. I gave myself a strict grocery budget of $60 a week which is surprisingly able to feed two people.
I’ve focused hard on paying off debt with the highest interest first. I’m now down to only 2 credit cards with any balance, one of which is 0% interest until March of next year, and roughly $2000 of CC debt. I have $1000 in savings. By the end of March, I’ll have paid off my >0%-interest debt completely and I can start actually saving up huge chunks of money at a time. I literally never thought I’d see this. I felt buried alive just four months ago, and now I’m seeing a huge bright light at the end of the tunnel. It’s amazing. Like, I’ve literally, in four months, managed to find $6000 in my budget. It’s insane how much I’ve been over-spending. Never again!
Anyway, that’s it. I’m still technically living month-to-month, but I’m so much closer to digging myself out of this hole than I ever thought I’d be. Just wanted to share my success!
Submitted February 28, 2017 at 03:22PM by Prestidigitalization http://ift.tt/2mqcftz
