Well, it’s time to celebrate some of my successes. If you’d rather not read this I won’t take offense. But this is a small antidote to my recent depression.
I’m debt-free. That took some work, and some sacrifices, and some planning, but mostly it took me hitting financial rock-bottom.
Short story is this: on Thanksgiving Day 2007, I totaled a rental car. I was fine and there were no passengers, but thanks to my complete misunderstanding of how American Express rental car insurance works, I had no way to pay for the damage to the car, which worked out, after six months of back-and-forth, to be around US$14,000.00. The rental company took me to court, I never showed up, and eventually, thanks to my inaction, I had a garnishment against my paycheck. It was stupid of me, I know, and I was ashamed but that point was my wake up call.
Having a large chunk (25% of my income) automatically deducted from my paycheck twice a month was hard, and it made it more difficult to pay my other debts (mostly consumer debt) and I started to fall behind. But then I met a woman who was working towards being debt-free herself, and I realized that losing weight is similar to managing money - they’re both numbers games, basically - and I admitted my screwup and asked her for help and we sat down and worked out a plan. She and I did not stay together, but I knew that I was paying off my debts for me, not for her. It would benefit me in the long run, a long run that, frankly, I had never before considered even possible for myself.
And it has. It took me just a little over two years. The garnishment was bad, yes, but on the other hand, I was actually paying off that particular debt very quickly. The other, smaller debts grew smaller, too, as I made a payment every month and sometimes twice a month. I basically worked the debt snowball - pay the minimums on everything, then focus all your extra money on the smallest debt until it’s gone, in order to create mental momentum. As I crossed off each debt from my spreadsheet, I shifted the money I was using there towards the next larger debt, until they were all gone.
Now I’m in the position where I could be saving more than half my paycheck. I’m not there, yet, because for at least the past two years, and for a while prior to that, too, I’d been living in a mentality of poverty, so I’ve been splurging on some things that I had been denying myself. But I am saving a large portion of my income, much more than most Americans: something like 25% of my income goes to savings now.
Another area of success for me is my running. I know I complain about being slow, and fat, but the fact of the matter is I get out and exercise at least three times a week. It’s more difficult when the weather is cold and gray, and I go through periods where I’m slower than others, but overall, I keep moving. I participate in at least one race every month and I have done that for almost two years. I’ve been running for 8 years, which, after my job, is the longest I’ve ever done something. I have a base of fitness on which to build, and I intend to keep doing something until I am no longer able to do anything.
