I guess it's normal to sit and wonder (more like stress) about how you're going to pay off any debts you AND pay your regular bills at the same time. Usually it takes a big wake up call to get your butt in gear. Think a repossession is a good wake up call? That's what has inspired mine. Now, by all means, having a repossession is by far, nothing to brag about. In fact, its quite embarrassing. It just makes me realize how many bills I haven't paid! Now, I know life gets in the way sometimes and kicks us on our ass and seems like everything will get in the way of making sure you get what you need. My case is a simple, almost mathematical equation; Surgery - Job - Money= Repossession. (For those of you who are horrible at math, like me; Surgery ended up with me losing my job, which subtracts any money for bills, which equals in repossession and tons of debt) Even though I will miss my little Rio, it's time I need to grow up and make sure this never happens again.
So, here I am, sitting at my dining room table at 12:30 am, going through all my bills and adding up everything I owe. The whopping amount? $16,270.51
Now I know some people who owe 10x more than that only on student loans, cars or mortgages alone. So I guess I am kinda lucky to be not too bad on the debt scale. I will admit, that most of my debt is the result of being legal (and a teenager) and applying for credit cards to shop and letting them get out of hand. Others are student loans, hospital bills and my little Rio. So, after adding all this up, I decided to set a goal for myself; to pay off ALL my debt in 365 days. It made me think of that movie, Julie and Julia, where she creates a blog to make all of Julia Child's recipes in a year? Yeah, that sort of thing. So let's break all this down.
Total: $16,270.51
Credit Cards- $1,875.11
College Loans- $2,262.65
Hospital/Surgery- $1,132.75
Car (before auction) -$ 11,000
So every 2 weeks (or more) I will update this blog and show what I've been paying and how quick my debt goes down! :) I know not everyone looks forward to spending this kind of money and getting nothing in return, but I believe a debt free life will be so much more worth than the other material things that money can buy.
365 to Debt Free. Day 1
