My Debt Blog

Here’s a snapshot of where I currently stand for the month of March. To my credit though I completely paid off my stove and the last $1000 for the furniture set. Take that and eat it debt!

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Let me start off by going back to the beginning of college. I’m only a 19 year old freshman at a state school. From the $18000 I saved my life for to go to college, half of it has been paid to the university. I have zero credit card debt. Responsibility got me to college, now I figured it was time to have fun.

By my sophomore year of college my money ran dry and my only source of income was loans and….dare I say credit cards. Stupid, I know. I wish I could go back and smack that kid, but we all live and learn. At this point I had accumulated about $3000 in credit card debt. Needed junk for my room and had to go out to eat dinner and stuff with my friends, right? I had that mentality that when I got out of college, having a ‘real’ job will just fix the problem.

Junior year rolls around the corner. I’m living in my fraternity house because it’s cheaper for me. I was putting every expense on a credit card, stupid again on my part, but it worked at the time. Now I’m up to about $7000 in credit card debt, the reality didn’t sink in. My girlfriend (now wife) kept telling me to use alternative student loans instead of piling school expenses on high interest credit card debt. I finally gave in and applied for an alternative loan which helped me free myself from the credit cards, I now had money in my checking account. (Stupid, I know.)

Senior year and I’m living in a really nice apartment, I had loan money to afford it. This covered the living expenses but when that money ran out towards the end of a semester, the credit cards would come in to catch me. Credit card debt climbed again, not as much, but to around $10000. If going into debt isn’t crazy enough, love can do the same. I bought my girlfriend a ring our last semester of college, and on April 14, 2005 I took a knee and asked her to be my wife.

We both rode out the rest of college feeling good about having our very expensive degree in hand (not literally, the thing they give you when you walk is blank, they mail it to you a month or so later) and ready to face the world. Moved up near Chicago, Chrissy was doing an internship and I got a job at a very large communications company as a programmer.

One would think having a lot of credit card debt would limit the chances of doing many things. I actually built up some positive credit long term credit history over my years. We knew that an apartment wouldn’t work for us long term, so the process of buying a house. It was not easy buying my first house, but I made it happen. On June 3, 2006 we were married and took a well deserved week vacation to Jamaica (the most expensive trip I have ever paid for in full ever).

The gravity of the debt situation hit me end of last year that I probably needed to start doing something about my debt. Blogging seems to be the latest trend for information, guidance, moral support, and knowledge sharing. I want to rid my life of the ‘bad debt’ that I have collected within the last 5 years. I’m 24 and have about $12000 in credit card debt.

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