Debt Confession

REAL TALK…

I am in $145K IN DEBT

Drowning in DEBT, this is my current situation

I started this blog to hold myself accountable and just maybe inspire others to start their own journey out of debt.

I want to give you hope that you can do it too! It’s never too late!

A little bit about me – I’m a stay at home mom in my late 40’s with one adult son and one teenage son. I left my full time job when my youngest son was born. I manage the money and pay the bills for my household. My husband works hard for our family and stays involved in the finances. We are both committing to changes moving forward.

I want to be able to be more generous with those less fortunate, with my family, and with my future family to come! I am not able to be generous with others until I get myself out of debt.

I wish I could say I didn’t know better or I never knew how to manage money or no one taught me about money but, unfortunately, that isn’t true.

I DID know better – I follow Dave Ramsey, I have taught Dave Ramsey’s methods. I just chose to not discipline myself. I lived for the now, the fun, the trips, the memories. I told myself that future me would deal with it. Now I realize future me has a huge mess to clean up and it will affect future generations of my family if I continue to kick the can down the road.

It only takes a few minutes to get into debt, but so much longer to get out of debt…

My debt feels overwhelming but I am learning not to trust my feelings – after all that’s what got me into this mess! I am choosing to just focus on one debt at a time to put extra money onto and pay the minimum payments on the rest.

I will use the snowball method so I can celebrate small victories along the way. I may veer from the snowball method a little due to a few cards having 0% interest and I don’t want to miss those payoff deadlines because if I do back interest will be added.

Debt Confessional

• Paypal $1,100
• Capital One $4,600
• Wells Fargo $5,150
• Citi $5,650
• American Express $8,100
• Car Payment 1 $21,474
• Car Payment 2 $25,610
• Heloc $74,000

Now as you can see it’s mostly credit card debt along with 2 car payments (which my husband and I have always avoided in the past…until we didn’t uggh) and a home equity line of credit (heloc).

You might think oh they used their heloc for home improvements and you would be wrong – that was actually more credit card debt that we rolled into a heloc to “get rid of it.” We thought we were being clever since the heloc had a lower interest rate than the credit cards…the only problem was we didn’t change our lifestyle and habits so we continued to accrue more CC debt.

I will plan to post weekly with progress updates, what I’m doing to get out of debt and what I chose to consume to keep me motivated.

Changing your mindset is the most important part of starting and staying motivated on this journey because it doesn’t happen overnight.

Thanks for stopping by I am trying to be debt free after 40

I hope you have been encouraged and realize you aren’t alone on this journey

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