I’ve written about this before, but when I was unemployed I got myself into some pretty deep credit card debt. I know I shouldn’t have, but what was I going to do? My budget was very strict, but still a girl has to eat. Anything that didn’t need to be paid by cash or check, I put on credit cards. It was kind of a desperate time for me, but I found some temporary work and then a full time job and now I’m getting promoted. 🙂

Saving and paying off debt is hard, so every week I have a portion of my paycheck directly deposited into my savings account and another portion directly deposited into an account strictly for paying off my credit cards. I schedule out the money each week from that account, so by the next day it’s gone and paying off those high interest rates. If sometime urgent comes up, I can always cancel it, but I don’t think that’s ever happened.

I also keep an excel doc tallying how much money I’ve saved and how much debt I’ve paid down. It’s not really for anything, but I get a tiny rush every time I see the numbers tick up and down, so it’s its own reward.  It is going to be SUCH a relief when I pay off the first card and then the second. I’ll be able to afford to live on my own and really bump up the amount of money I’m saving in my retirement account and savings account. Maybe I’ll even invest in something, but that’s another goal for another time.

Until tomorrow.

272 days to go.