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My Exclusive Membership in Credit Card Hell
By DaveM | March 16, 2006
So, I guess it’s time to bare my soul and reveal just how bad my credit card situation really is. As I mentioned in my previous post about financial troubles, I’ve let myself get somewhat complacent over the past 2-3 years and we had some recent unexpected (large) expenses due to our home construction project.
Anyway… I’m ashamed to admit that we now have approximately $16,000 in total debt spread across four different credit card accounts. Did you cringe when you read that number like I did when I typed it? OUCH! 
We also have a $9K car loan and, of course, our mortgage. Sure, we’ve been told over and over again by numerous people that we’re just “average”, but who the heck wants to be average like this?
I think it’s safe to say, we’re officially in credit card HELL! And, believe me, I feel like we’re VIP’s — they give us fancy little drinks with umbrellas and everything!
We’ve already committed to each other (the wife and I, if I you didn’t already figure that out) that 2006 is the YEAR OF DEBT REDUCTION. We are absolutely 100% laser focused on paying down ALL of the credit card debt by the end of this year!
Sounds impossible doesn’t it? I have to admit, it does seem like a crazy lofty goal, but I honestly feel we can do it. When we put our minds to something, we usually make it happen - and we often end up overachieving on whatever goal we set. For me, that probably has something to do with the success conditioning I’ve subjected my brain to recently. For my wife, it just seems to come naturally. She makes me sick! 
To help pull off this incredible feat of debt obliteration, we stopped all our regular investments except for my 401K at work. All extra money is now slated for crushing debt. We didn’t fully fund our ROTH IRA’s for 2005, but we’re planning to tap one of our mutual funds before April 15th to get that done. We thought about using that money to pay off a credit card, but decided the money is better spent to fully fund the ROTH’s.
Why? Good question.
Because two of the credit card accounts are already zero interest for 1 year, and I’m in the process of consolidating the rest onto another zero balance Discover card, also a 1 year promotion. So, it was much better to use the money to earn more money and fund our early retirement, than to pay off debt that isn’t costing us anything at the moment.
As far as funding the ROTH’s for 2006… Well, we’ll just worry about that little issue later.
So there you have it. I dropped my pants for all the world to see. Now you know that I’m just as human as the next person. Despite all the financial advice I’ve given over the years, I have to swallow my pride and start gulping down some of my own medicine.
In an upcoming post, I’ll tell you about a financial “secret” I discovered in November last year that made me finally realize what we’d been doing so wrong for so many years.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Welcome to the hades! We’re roughly in the same boat. Runaway credit is like any addiction. The first step we had to take is admitting we had a problem. We felt like we were in a 12 step AA program!
It is awesome that you’ve made the first step. You can be confident that you are on your way and we wish you the best!
September 18th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
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