helpmeimpoor.blog

https://helpmeimpoor.blog

This past month I've truly put my head down - taking a break from blogging and podcasting - to finish paying off what I like to refer to as my post-grad mistakes. It turns out that all those self-help books were right about me needing to put all my focus on this goal!I will literally be saving about $1300 a MONTH by not being in debt anymore - and it feels like I have a whole new outlook on life. I'll never forget the day I realized that I was losing hope. I was 24 and sharing an apartment in the Bay Area with my boyfriend and two other friends. I missed the simplicity of undergrad and feeling like I knew what I was doing. I was also horribly in debt and couldn't figure out how to fix what I'd done. For dinner that evening, I decided on Denny's - our old, cheap, college treat. Over breakfast food and hot chocolate, made a choice to dedicate my time to learning about personal finance and making a plan to get out of debt.Here's the secret: it doesn't happen overnight.Sure, you could potentially land a job with a huge signing bonus to magically fix your problem, or just hope to win the lottery, but neither of those things actually addresses the truth: you're terrible at managing your money. Every time I thought I was making headway - getting a raise or picking up a side job - I still felt like I wasn't making any progress. As soon as I paid off some of my debt, there the interest was creeping back on the balance I hadn't paid off. I thought about the fact that I was young, I wanted to have fun! So, off I went on trips/bars/etc. spending money I hadn't planned on and didn't know how to budget for. Another way to reframe the secret: it takes time to develop good financial habits. Even though I'm out of debt, I'm still working on practicing self-control and being conscious about my budget. Here's what really helped me get out of the hole. Again, the big secret here is that all of these things took time. Stop charging! I stopped using several of my credit cards and instead began to use just one, then just my debit card when possible Balance transfer cardThis advice really helped turn my situation around. I opened a balance transfer card and used it to get a lower interest rate. Click here if you'd like to try this strategy out.Automated savingsInstead of wishing and hoping that I would one day be able to save money, I opened an account that was difficult to access and automatically had a portion of my paycheck flow into it. (Read more on that here)Automated PayoffIn addition to paying myself first with my automated savings, I took out some personal loans to get a lower interest rate on my debt and also set my debt to auto-pay!Through all of this, I was constantly creating and re-creating my budget.A good rule of thumb is the 50/30/20 rule. I was falling subject to lifestyle creep (letting my expenses grow as my salary did because I thought I could afford it) and needed to force myself to live on a lower salary without getting into more debt. Tracking my spending and creating a budget really helped with that.If you're smarter than me (which you might very well be since you're here reading this post), you can start on ALL of these steps today. Better yet, take a nice Saturday or Sunday morning with a cup of coffee (or tea) and enjoy the process. Seeing everything you owe might overwhelm you, but trust me: getting started and making progress is better than staring hopelessly at a plate of cold eggs and bacon wondering how you'll ever get out of it.Help yourself be not poor.

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