With all this financial crisis and panic I’ve decided to start really taking a hard look at our habits and see what we can do to keep ourselves from going down the dark road of debt.
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to try to build a nest egg and keep track of everything we’re spending. We had a little bit of money set aside and decided to completely pay off our credit card debt and put the rest in a high interest savings account. We were motivated. In January we were able to stick to the almost impossibly strict budget. Grocery shopping was done with a calculator in hand, if we went over the budget we started putting things back. It was great.
February was still pretty good. The calculator came to the grocery store still. We were motivated by how much we saved in January.
Then after that we started slipping. The motivation waned, the self-deception started kicking in. It’s fine if put that one thing on the credit card, we’ll totally pay it off by the end of the month…
In March we were both completely depressed with the winter that just wouldn’t end so we bought tickets for a vacation. Bought ourselves some other things that were on the list of stuff we’d like to have but just shouldn’t buy right now.
It was a slow slide. We’re not even close to where we were as far as credit card debt but the little red flags are going up. And the voice in my head is saying ‘You better stop this now. Remember how stressful it was having that payment hanging over your head?”
Probably about 5 months ago I found this website called Mint . You sign up for an account and link your bank and credit cards and it keeps track of every penny you spend. It breaks everything into categories. It’s great but also gives me information that I don’t always want to know, like we’ve been living beyond our means every month since I signed up for the account. And some months not by just a few dollars.. Kind of shocking.
I kind of ignored that part of the page until the past couple weeks. I justified it. Oh we had that vet bill or we had people visiting so we had to spend the money and go out to dinner. Or I’ve been working really hard lately I deserved a little special reward. And thing that’s the most shocking is we are thrifty. We are both really conscious (I thought) of what we’re spending on a daily basis. But all the little things add up. The ATM fees, the $20 here and there on random things.
Now I’m taking a long hard look at it and the living beyond our means is going to stop. It kind of fits in with the post a couple months ago about this compulsion so many people feel to consume and surround themselves with more and more things. It has to stop, at least for me.
Saving money makes me feel good. I really hate putting things on the credit cards. I’ve set a goal to pay the credit cards down to $0 by March. I have a really old college debt that will also be paid off in the next 6 months. And the credit cards will not be used for anything except an emergency like an unexpected vet bill we can’t afford to pay cash for or a car repair etc.
After all the debt is gone, the money that was going to paying off those bills is going to go directly into the savings account.
This is another article I read lately that kind of inspired me. Women in Red