We did pretty well paying off debt in 2014, but need to improve in 2015. One of the first steps: coming to terms with the credit card debt. Up until now, we had a general awareness of the amounts owed – a lot. It was a bit depressing to tabulate, but here are the totals:
- $5,000 at 21.99%
- $5,400 at 14.99%
- $5,600 at 19.24%
- $2,000 at 21.99%
- $1,800 at 9.9%
- $4,500 at 0% (until May 2015)
- $3,300 at 27% (we’ve been paying this one off every month)
- $4,500 at 19.99%
- $11,100 at 12.99%
Ouch – the grand total comes to $43,200. Excuse me for a moment while I cry a bit.
All right, all right, time to adjust my thinking. We did this to ourselves; the blame is on us. However, we’ve identified and quantified the enemy. So now, we can kill it. It’s painful to look at the total, but I’m optimistically looking forward to watching the amounts steadily decrease to nothing.
Young Adult Money just posted a list of ways to improve your finances and number one was to “Evaluate Your Debt.” I commented about my plans, finally, to total up the credit cards. The author (DC) suggested we look in credit consolidation or cards with 0% on balance transfers. I believe that we have already exhausted our options for 0% cards (we’ve been dealing with avoiding our debt for too long). The debt consolidation might be a good option, though, especially with some of the higher-interest cards.
Bottom line: we can’t afford to live in denial anymore. This list represents an important accomplishment on our path to a better life. Well, I guess that it’s time to get to work.
We are paying off our loans too! No children yet but hoping to have some soon. We have about $18 k in student loans, $25 k in care loans and $1.3 k in random other stuff. 🙂
Best of luck to you. And kudos for working on debt BEFORE having children – wish that we would have done that.
You can do it Harmony! I owed around $60,000 just two years ago (and had been in debt for years and years). It is possible to defeat the debt monster and I’ll be rooting for you! Just keep at it and you’ll see those numbers reducing before you know it.
Thank you so much for stopping by and for the encouraging words. It seems like such an insurmountable task, but we have to stay confident that our goals can be reached if we just keep at it.
Way to go confronting your debt head-on! Rooting for you! 🙂
Thank you so much <3
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