My Debt Blog

Getting to the bare all point here, I wanted to find out just how much I am worth? Turns out my own personal net worth is not bad. I’ll make it clear that this is my personal net worth and does not include the debt my wife has. For the sake of this blog, as I have always stated, I am focusing on my credit card debt.

Ordering of how I would like to do things:

1. Credit card debt - This debt pile has been sitting on me since college. I want to try to put as much focus into getting rid of credit card debt over the next year or two until it’s gone!
2. Offsetting student loan debt by investing - As much as paying off student loan debt faster, I think it would be wiser to offset it through investing in stocks or mutual funds. I do not see student loan debt as bad debt because the interest is tax deductible.
3. Saving emergency fund - Having a pool of money built up just incase something were to happen (i.e. job loss, disability, etc) it would be nice to have a few months living expenses available to use if needed.
4. 529 college savings plans - I will estimate by the time I get near this point in my life, I’ll be a father. College today is extremely important in order to have access to more jobs, more income, and more out of life.

This may not all necessarily happen in this order as life is never a straight road with no bumps, potholes, or speed limit. I would love to run my own business because I have that entrepreneurial spirit and dream of doing this some day. Doing the 9-5 regular W2 job gives me stability though in the sense that I know what I have coming in each month. I am trying to work out the details to get a business going on the side though, more on that later.

Comments(1)

I messed up big time for not catching this to begin with. My wife has been very busy April finishing out her last semester of her graduate program since she will be doing student teaching in the fall of this year. At any rate, she basically forgot or didn’t pay any of her credit cards. Now we have a huge problem regarding very inflated payments for May. I was upset a first about it but I understand how stressful things get at the end of a semester, but it shouldn’t justify not keeping up with other responsibilities.

This blog I setup mostly for myself, but being married of course the finances merge into one big mess. I’m a huge advocate of making sure bills are properly paid, before or on their due date, to avoid any fees or problems. By no means am I saying my wife is lazy, she messed up and it too late to fix it right now, given I just found out about this tonight. She feels that I should handle making sure her credit cards get paid on time, which I don’t mind doing because I’m the one who handles our finances. We have to take it easy this month to make up for about $300 worth of payments on top of what is normally due. I thought April was supposed to be a bad month given all of the extra expenses.

This month is going to take some extra belt tightening, on the budget and probably my actual belt because I am losing some weight. I’m not sure how many out there have had a curve ball like this just blindside you. Just as much as I want to be debt free, I share the same goals to eliminate my wife’s debt too so all the money we pay our cards with builds wealth and that we will eventually live the life we want.

Comments(1)

Today me and my wife went to see the Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals game. She got tickets for this on Friday through an online site, it was reputable though, moreso than the ticket scalpers trying to rip you off. We were going to take the train, but a guy on a motorcycle took his sweet time at the ATM we missed it by about a minute. The train would of cost us both $10 bucks to ride both ways. We ended up driving otherwise we would not make it in time for the game. Car needed gas though, at $2.86 a gallon it cost $27 to fill up.

Traffic was really bad because in Chicago all they do is work on the roads, it’s not like the cars actually have to ever use them some day. Adding insult to injury, because we were running behind the street parking was for the most part taken. Found a gas station that was basically selling itself out for parking, $25 bucks to park the car. At least we were within very reasonable walking distance to the ballpark. A very minor detour 2 blocks north to pick up our tickets, then 2 blocks back down to Wrigley Field, we made it to the start of the game.

Being about 1:30 PM, we didn’t eat anything so decided to get lunch before finding our seats, $20 for the food. Walked up a lot of ramps, then some more ramps, and then stairs to find our seats. Middle of a row, wonderful, people had to stand up so we could carefuly slide our way past them, food in hand, to our seats. Game was going pretty good until a few hours later at about the sixth or seventh inning, needed to stretch and get a snack. Back down the ramps to the bottom again. Had to walk all over the place down there to find this stupid lemon smoothy thing I loved as a kid, she had cotton candy, $10 for snacks.

The Cubs somehow tied the game at 9 in the 9th inning, but then in the overtime St. Louis Cardinals hit a homer with 2 on base making the score 12 to 9. We admitted the Cubs defeat and decided to go home. Overall, the day was a little expensive at over $100 spent. Sometimes there is more to life than worring about money, and just spending the day with someone you love is one of those lessons.

Comments(0)

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.

Comments(3)