I'm a full time college student and up until Thanksgiving of last year I had a part time fast food job that I absolutely hated. The hours were sporadic (3 hour shifts in the middle of the day, never consitent with the amount of hours I would get a week, sometimes 9 sometimes 19), management was bad, the job just wasn't worth my time. Since I had enough in my savings to live off of for a few months I put in my 2 week notice before Thanksgiving and left after it.
Fast forward a few months and I have the time to focus on school, living frugally (meal prep, not eating out or going out much, coupons) & I managed to be okay. But I miscalculated my expenses and ran out of money at the beginning of March when I paid rent with my credit card. The semester is almost over and I didn't have the time to have a job, so for the last 2 months I bounced my debt from one card to the other, while doing odd jobs to get some income. Today I received my tax returns which paid off all my credit card debt (about $1,200) plus next months rent, with enough left over for food and other expenses. One the semester ends i plan to work all summer to rack up some savings again, and I got a job lined up when I come back to classes in the fall.
Moral of the story/TL;DR - learned the value of having savings as a safety net, of calculating your true expenses instead of estimating them, and while I wouldn't recommend my method of bouncing debt from one card to another, having good credit really does help.
Submitted April 25, 2018 at 03:20PM by miguelz509 https://ift.tt/2Hri9p4
