When you’re in the middle of paying off debt, especially consumer debt, it’s easy to feel like you shouldn’t buy anything you want. I mean, after all, isn’t that generally part of the reason you got in debt in the first place? With that in mind, I was shocked when the debt counselor I worked with years ago said I had the freedom to buy the things I wanted…I just had to be disciplined about it. The problem can be how to do it though and how to do it wisely.
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Should You Get A Credit Card After Paying off Debt?
I remember making my last debt payment like it was yesterday. It felt like the shackles I had been wearing around my ankles for five years finally fell off. A funny thing happened though as I was done with the journey – I started getting more credit card offers. Crazy I know, but that’s the nature of the system. That said, I know many deal with not knowing when or if they should even get a credit card after paying off debt. If you’re in that situation, hopefully my experience helps. [Read more…] about Should You Get A Credit Card After Paying off Debt?
How to Overcome Being Tired of Paying Off Debt
Paying off debt, whether it be due to credit cards or something like student loans can be difficult – to say the least. When you’re wallowing under a pile of debt it can seem like it will never end and that you’ll always be dealing with this burden of debt. As someone who has been through that journey, I understand the emotions that arise and know that there need to be ways to overcome them. [Read more…] about How to Overcome Being Tired of Paying Off Debt
What to Do if You Find Yourself in Credit Card Debt
I would imagine that many of us have either dealt with credit card debt, or at least know someone who has. The fact that the average household has more than $15,000 of credit card debt (of those that have credit card debt) tells me that many are intimately acquainted with such debt.
If you have dealt with it, then you can relate to how unbearable the feeling might be, but the good thing to remember is that it is possible to slay the beast of credit card debt. While I am disciplined with my credit cards now, and use them to leverage free money for vacations I was not always that way. I discovered the lure of the credit card in college and graduated with almost $25,000 in consumer debt. The tips I’ll share are not so much action-oriented, rather, they’re ways to wrap your mind around the debt so you can start to work on paying it off.
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Should I Pay My Significant Other’s Debt?
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to worry about student loans and credit card debt when dating, but credit score dating has become a real thing. Once you are past dating and in a serious relationship, things get even more complicated.
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Is Your Credit Card Debt Worth the Cost?
I remember the day like it was yesterday, I was looking at my four credit card statements and saw that I was just north of $20,000 in credit card debt. I asked myself, how did I get there? It did not help that I had just come back from the music store having purchased four or five CD’s that I had no business buying, yet I still did not see the issue. My problem was that I was using credit cards to fund a lifestyle that I wanted, and felt that I deserved but was doing it at the expense of my future. It would be one thing if the credit card debt was due to me losing a job or something like that, but sadly it was largely spent on junk that I did not need. One question kept running through my mind – was all that stuff worth the cost?