Kristin's Venture out of Debt

So I just headed back through the Freebies section and signed up for a bunch of stuff. It really does help. For a while I didn't have to buy any shampoo or conditioner, I was going off free samples for a month or two. I haven't bought deodorant in over a year, or toothpaste, due to samples that I've gotten. If it's a good enough one I'll have my mom sign up for it too. Yes, I cheat, but I figure I'm saving a few bucks a month by not having to buy these things, so it's worth it.

I need to pay rent tomorrow

Well, step one in saving money has been done. I went through everything that we are paying for and cancelled things that weren't necessary or not being used. Mostly games. We had some different games that were being paid monthly for that weren't being played enough to keep paying on them. For example, James was still paying for his World of Warcraft account and has only been playing about twice a month, if it was even that. We decided that it wasn't worth it to continue paying $15 a month for something that was only being played a few hours. If he wants to play again later we can always re-activate the account. It was all just little things like that, but everything ads up!

James and I made a decision last night. We are going to go open a savings account next payday, and start putting a minimum of $10 a week in it. So $10 a week for the rest of the year will give us $90 already. It's not a lot but it's more than we have now, which is nothing.

I think it's doable. $10 isn't that much. I'm going on a diet and planning on cutting out soda and munchies (potato chips, candy, etc) and taking that out of my weekly spending should more than cover the $10.

It seems a manageable enough goal. So for the rest of the year, it is our goal, after that it may change. Writing it down makes it real, and putting it out there makes it harder to go back on.

I'm not going to set a specific day for depositing. We plan to start this account at a different bank than our main accounts do that it's not as convenient to get the money. We'd need to make a special trip to go get it. I'll most likely do the deposits on weekends when I go grocery shopping.

Thanks for all the support since I've started here. I think that will help a lot as well.

So I initially set this thing up about 2 months ago, but things got really tough then and all savings plans went out the window. Now I've got my credit card debt consolidated and all of the other bills caught up so that nothing is behind anymore, and it's time to start working on knocking out the credit card debt and building up some savings.

My boyfriend and I got to this point of debt by being careless with credit cards. It started off with one, to use when there was something we needed ASAP and didnt have money for (ex: care repairs, replacement appliances, dr appointments, etc). After that it turned into opening store cards with the intent of buying one item then paying it off, which never happened. With the credit card bills building up, we got to a point of not being able to afford food, therefore getting another card to cover gas and groceries. All of this leading up to $20k just in credit card debt at age 23. I also have my car payment, and he owes money on a few things that have gone to collections.

We have no savings account at the moment, but plan on getting one next pay day.

We've stopped using credit cards completely. All except for two of them have been closed. The last two are being paid down and saved for emergency situations, mainly because we have no savings to fall back on if we need it. Once we can get a savings account built up, I'll probably close those last two credit cards.

I know I've tried this before, but this time I think I really am ready to tackle this mountain of debt.