Credit Card Crunch

Here’s the thing about credit card debt. You can spend, spend, spend and have all these shiny glittery new things, but at the end of the day, the money has to come from somewhere. And if you spend, spend, spend, eventually you will be broke, broke, broke, because not only does spending beyond your means mean that you will have less money to spend later but it also means you’ll have less money to save.

By far, one of the worst financial predicaments you can get yourself into is credit card debt. And this is where I introduce ours.

From June to July, we had an uptick and actually didn’t pay off any part of our credit card debt. This was due to the vacation we took to Kauai. Obviously, people who are broke and in debt shouldn’t be taking vacations–but, we’ll talk about that in another post. Since June, we’ve paid off almost 1273.92 toward our debt. Averaged over four months, that’s only about $300 a month. Not too great.

However, if you only average over three months, and count only when we actually started working toward paying things off, you’ll see we’ve been averaging $424.64 a month. If we continue with this trend, it will take more than NINE MONTHS to pay off our debt.

That is just NOT okay. Our goal of Christmas time is looking very lofty, but I would like to be out of debt in SIX MONTHS at the latest. I would love to celebrate our first wedding anniversary without an ounce of credit card debt to our name.

We have a couple of upcoming changes that may make it difficult or easier to reach our goal.

Making it Easier

1. We will be moving in October, and hope to save $250 in rent and utilities–> putting the extra money into debt.
2. We will be cutting cable, giving us an extra $100 to put toward debt
3. We are expecting a $650 freelance check, to go straight toward debt
4. And another $150 check, also straight toward debt

Making it Difficult

1. We will be moving, and will have to take money out of our savings for a deposit, plus moving costs
2. Because of the move, we may have to pay a pet rent or deposit (something we don’t currently pay)
3. Eric is getting a new job and we are unsure if his paycheck will be more or less, and he may not get a paycheck for the first month
4. Our current apartment comes with a television but when we move, we may have to buy a TV, or we may go without one for as long as possible–we’ll see when the time comes

To make it to our six-month-goal, we have to average a monthly payment of $634. WITHOUT adding any extra onto our cards. Can we do it???

I sure hope so.