No Counting, Just Trying

I can't keep counting the days that we've been paying off debt when we realistically have not been paying off debt during much of that time. I haven't written lately because I feel like a big, fat failure. We've only added to our debt.

I think last time I wrote, we were getting or had just gotten a consolidation loan to pay off some of our credit cards, or maybe I hadn't even done that yet. Anyway, we consolidated a ton of our debt and promptly went out and ran up those cards all over again. As much as I talk about wanting to pay off debt, I can't stop spending money. And then I blame it on my husband. Looking at our expenditures, it's mostly me. It's my random trips to Kohl's, my daily lunches with coworkers, buying toys for the kids just to buy for them. I like to spend money because I work hard for it and feel like I deserve it.

But, we're no better off now than we were before. We're treading water. We make minimum payments on credit cards and then use those cards to pay for the things that we need and want, so every month our bills are staying at exactly the same level.

We made the decision last week that we were going to use our savings account to pay off credit card debt. Clearly, it's not going to cover all of it because we have so much debt and so little money, but we're paying off our Target credit card, our Kohl's card (which we used to buy a new vacuum when our old one burned up last week), and the bulk of the balance on one of our credit union cards. Basically, it puts us back to where we were when we consolidated our debt in the first place.

We will mostly tread water through the end of the year, trying to save enough money to pay for Christmas and limiting what we purchase this year, and then when we get our bonuses and tax return after the first of the year, we'll pay another large chunk of our debt. Then finally, next summer, we'll use all of the savings we've accumulated to pay off the remainder of our credit card debt. It will leave us with two car loans, my student loans, and our mortgage, but we won't have revolving debt anymore.

This also means I'm taking my lunch four days a week and limiting my lunch excursions to Friday's. We're trying to eat out less as a family too, for our health and our wallets. I got a raise last month, which my husband doesn't know. It only added $40 a paycheck, but that's a tank of gas for my car. I should get another raise after the first of the year.

I never expected this to be so hard. I didn't expect it to be so much work. Hopefully by next summer, I'll be reporting how we're in such a better place than we are right now. I want to save for our retirement, and I'd like to buy a bigger house, but how are we supposed to do that when we can't even discipline ourselves right now?