Worse than I thought

I have now spent quite a bit of time trying to get a real picture of where I stand financially, and let me tell you, it is not pretty. I want to say it is worse than I thought, but in reality, I didn’t think about it at all. With every single one of my accounts in one place to look at, I am faced with an even bigger challenge than I thought I was going into. I started to get a little more serious about paying off my debts over the last few months, but it is only now that I am truly declaring a war against my debt. I’ve listed each of my debts below. These are actually not the current balances for my credit cards, but they are the balances at the highest point, which was just a few months ago for each. I wanted to give myself a more accurate starting point to work from, plus it makes me feel a little better that I’ve already made some progress on paying it down.

I have 4 credit cards with balances, along with a car loan. My car is actually scheduled to be paid off the same month as my 30th birthday, so at least I have one thing going for me. When I went through several months of each of my credit cards, I had some realizations. I knew each of the individual balances was steadily growing, but I made big payments to them each month, so I just assumed eventually they would stop growing. The real problem was that I continued to use the cards regularly. I pretty much lived on my credit cards for everything, then at the end of the month, I took all the money in my bank account and made the payments. I just didn’t pay attention to what the difference between those amounts was.

So, here is the complete list of people to whom I owe a ridiculous amount of money:

Banana Republic - $597.70
American Express - $1880.42
Nordstrom Visa - $5197.32
Citibank - $25,339.16

Car Loan - $4,614.62

Total $38, 229.06

The Goal

I have loved my 20's. I hve lived a pretty great life so far. I've traveled all over the world; I've had some great experiences with my friends and family; I've worked with charities; and I've pretty much bought anything I've needed to support this extravagant lifestyle. The only thing I have not been able to do is to pay for all of it. Instead, I have accumulated some pretty impressive debts with some pretty depressing interest rates. So, today I have decided that I need to make a change before my situation gets completely out of control.

To that end, I've set a goal for myself. I am determined to pay off all of my consumer debt before my 30th birthday, 487 days from today. I think I can do it, but it is NOT going to be easy.

My first step is to get a real picture of where my finances stand right now, then spend the next 16 months moving my accounts from red to black.

Wish me luck, and please follow along my journey to financial freedom!