How do you guys feel about talking about money? I feel good about it more and more these days, but I haven’t always been that way. In fact, for almost all of my adult life I have felt a hot, sticky shame about myself as it relates to money. I told myself this story about how I was ‘bad’ with money and I made a lot of decisions about money in that place of low self-worth. Lately, I’m over thinking and living that way and I am learning a whole new story about money. I am starting to believe that money is neutral as a concept, neither good nor bad just like food, sex and alcohol. It’s how you use it or interact with it that can turn it into a positive or negative thing in your life. I also believe that money is an exchange of energy. There are positive and negatives exchanges of energy, but I choose now to use money as a positive energy exchange as much as possible.
That means being thankful for money and the way it enriches my life. It means trusting that enough money will always be there. It means being generous with the money I do have and using it to enrich the lives of the people I love, including myself. It also means making smart, reasonable decisions with money while keeping the longer game in mind.
For the first time in my life, I have a reasonable debt payoff plan. I have taken a long look at my expenses and I have devised a plan to get myself out of debt in three years. I used to try to do these crazy debt payoff plans that would involve eating hot ramen for months on end and, just like a diet, a few weeks in I would get sick of the restriction and throw my whole plan out the window. Inevitably, I’d end up worse off than I was before. I’m done living like that. I’m thankful to have reliable income right now at a job I love that I think will allow me to pay off all my debt in just 36 months using a snowball effect where once I pay down one debt, I carry that money over to the next lowest debt until it’s all paid off. I have also committed that any extra money I get unexpectedly will go toward my debt. For example, out of the blue a few weeks ago, Xfinity called me and helped me lower our cable and internet bill by sixty dollars a month. I added that money to our debt repayment tracker and it basically shaved a month off of my plan!
I also got a little bit of extra money in my job transition, so I used it to pay off my smallest debt a couple months ahead of schedule. That’s the benefit I’m finding about having a reasonable plan. It makes paying bills fun because it feels like I’m making progress. That positive energy while paying bills totally shifts everything and motivates me to keep going.
So, this month I reached my first milestone: paying off my Home Depot card. I initially opened the card to pay for the Tuff Shed you can see in the background of the photo. That was a necessary expense because we have virtually no storage in our house. I got the card with a 0% interest on purchases for the first twelve months and paid it off ahead of schedule and felt no regret about the purchase because that shed is 100% awesome and worth every penny. Then, last year, we were going to host a big Friendsgiving party at our house and I got insecure about the size of our house and decided that we NEEDED patio furniture to host this one party. The only problem? It was November and finding patio furniture I liked online or second-hand was almost impossible. I ended up using another 0% interest offer from Home Depot to buy some furniture that I thought was just meh. The party ended up being just okay and I had to pay like $2700 of furniture off within 12 months. I somehow lost track of the payment schedule and ended up getting charged like $500 worth of interest because I didn’t pay it off in time. So, as you can see, it wasn’t the most prudent financial decision; however, I learned so much from this experience. I learned to only spend my money on things that really matter to me. I learned to never spend money to impress people and I learned that for things like furniture, I prefer to pay cash with money I already have, ideally on second-hand furniture. I think that lesson was worth every penny. Do you?
At any rate, this month we officially own this patio furniture! One major, major step in a 3 year plan and I am rejoicing! Now, every time I look in my backyard, I feel thankful. Thankful for the lessons and for the progress. Thankful that I now own the furniture out there and thankful to be on this wonderful journey. When I think about what it’s going to feel like to be completely free of debt, I get goosebumps. I seriously cannot wait, but yet, I can wait because I know that the journey there is going to be so, so sweet.
My next big goal is to pay off one of our cars. According to the plan, we should own it by July so I’ll check back in with you again in the next few months.
If you had to rate your relationship with money on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself? A year ago, I would’ve rated myself a 2. I used to have full-on inner panic attacks about money and my spending habits. The way I used to berate myself about it was so awful. These days I’d say I’m a solid 7. I still have the panic sometimes, but I am better about soothing myself. I have also gotten glimpses of what it’s like to live as a 10 with money peace and a full believe in the abundance of the universe and, wow, it’s so motivating to continue doing the internal work so I can be there most of the time.
