I’m 21, have a car I’m still paying off, and due to reckless spending, have roughly $6000 of debt that needs paid off. It started off innocent enough a couple years back when I used PayPal credit to build myself a new computer, and told myself that I wouldn’t use it for anything else until it’s completely paid. Due to my own stupidity, I now have 2 credit cards, PayPal credit, and a couple loans (that fortunately are getting paid off since I can’t keep adding to them.) The loans were to pay off the credit cards before. Now they have a lot on them again. After taxes, I bring home roughly $2000 a month give or take. Since I have multiple loans, credit cards, rent, car loan, cellphone bill, and need to keep putting gas in my car every week, almost every penny of that those paychecks is gone. I’m at the point where I don’t have any money left, and I need to end up using the credit cards to even feed myself, and mind you I might end up spending $30 a week on food and that’s even pushing it. It’s gotten to the point where I’m not making any progress to paying the credit off since the interest + me using the little I have is more than the payments I can afford to make each month. I’ve thought about reducing what I put into my retirement funds each paycheck, but I’m afraid it won’t help at all. I don’t even play on retiring in the first place, but I don’t know what the future holds, and even if I wanted to I have no way of taking out of the 401k. I’ve been planning on returning to college so I can actually get a degree and make enough to get rid of all of this debt, but I can’t go back until my student loans are paid off and there’s $1200 left. I’m only turning to reddit since I’m out of ideas.
Anyone been in a situation like this? How do you get out? Any advice whatsoever is appreciated.
EDIT - I’m working on an expense list just to get a better idea of what I could be budgeting better. One downside is I started a new job last week, which overall does pay more, but the department that I transferred to no longer has overtime as an option. I tried to negotiate more pay but HR refused to budge, and I had to accept regardless out of fear of losing my job due to some changes being made at the previous position in the next couple months. $1000 after taxes was with OT each paycheck. Considering I no longer have that option, chances are each check is going to be only $850, so I’m looking at $1700 each month.
Submitted May 28, 2019 at 05:10AM by WantlessTrack http://bit.ly/2YVxgLU
