Hi All - I've been on this site for almost 20 years, and about 14 years ago, this site was instrumental in me getting myself to live below my means, get out of debt, and begin saving for retirement. Then I had a baby, and for the last 7 years or so, I've been slowly sliding back into credit card debt. I was in denial for quite a long time, but the amount I owed just kept growing and growing, so I'm trying to really face it and deal with it.
I'm realizing that one thing that has helped me in many areas of my life is a little bit of structure and accountability, and this site has helped me with that in other areas (decluttering and other personal goals). So I think I'm going to start posting here regularly about the ups and downs of getting rid of this debt.
I'm too embarrassed to name the full amount, but I will say it's in the mid-low 5 figures (!!!). I've moved some of the debt to 0% credit cards which has helped a little. In the last several years, as I stayed in denial, the debt was growing every year little by little. The good news is that this year, as I've started to face the reality of it, it has decreased by 10% in the last seven months. It's a start.
I've written down some benchmarks for decreasing the debt month by month. If I more or less hit the benchmarks, I *could* pay off the full amount by April 2019, but I'm not sure how realistic that is. Nevertheless, I'm going to set it as a tentative goal and report here every month how I'm doing.
So today I paid all my bills, and paid down the debt a little more, so that it went down 4.4% from last month. I'd like to make a bigger dent in it, but for now, I am just going to take the attitude that a decrease is a decrease and that's something.
Anybody else out there trying to pay off big debt and wanting to share their progress here? I would love it if others were on this journey with me!