Two years ago I had $29,000 worth of bad debt and pretty much nothing to show for it.  A few happy snaps!  I’d had it for nearly 10 years. It hung over my head.  It weighed me down.  I could physically feel it making me heavier.   It made me feel I couldn’t move forward.  I couldn’t go on holidays without guilt, I couldn’t buy a house – I couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t.  And if I did I felt guilty.   It was time to do something about it.  I wanted fun and adventure and to feel I deserved it!

OBVIOUSLY I had been trying for years to pay it off.  Soooooo hard.  One step forward, one step back.  Forward, back – over and over and over again.  Suddenly big bills would come up or someone would have a wedding or I had to move house.  There was always something making me going backwards after the struggle of moving forwards.

But a time comes when enough is enough.  Your head space works.  You get determined and somehow you manage to keep it up.  Is it habit and routine?  Is it the light at the end of the tunnel?  Is it the reward you will give yourself?

The biggest failure for me was always have a whiteboard and crossing off when I reached goals. You could always see there were too many goals to go.  it was disheartening.  So I swapped it around.  Everytime I did something great I wrote it on my whiteboard.  For a few months i even had a ‘sacrifice’ list.  Everything I said no to. So instead of feeling my life was a huge disappointing boring existence of saying ‘no’ I felt like a hero for having the willpower and adding it to my whiteboard.  I also had a splurge list.  So I could see I was having fun even if I was also saying no a lot.  And I could see that the ‘sacrifice’ list was bigger than the ‘ splurge’ list so I was heading in the right direction.  And every time I paid some off I wrote it on my whiteboard.  I could see that number growing smaller and smaller.  It urged me on.  Just do one week at a time.  Just do one month at a time.  I can do one more month.  One more month of being sensible.  And then that sensible felt so damn good I would do another month.

Here’s a copy of my whiteboard end of last year so you get the idea…

Add in – let’s do $50 instead of $200 dinners.  Let’s do BYO.  Let’s take money out of the bank once a week and not spend anymore than that.  Let’s plan out the fun for the week.

And there were months where I hated my life and stayed home feeling incredibly miserable.  But I barely remember those times.  The 19 months it took me to pay off debt actually went really really fast.  I can barely remember it now.  But what I do remember – and I remember this every day is how incredible it feels to have NO bad debt now.  It seemed an impossible dream for me.  But I did it.  I can’t tell you how proud of myself I am.  And if I can do that, then imagine what else is possible!

And I only have one regret interestingly since paying it off.  I didn’t celebrate enough!  I was so used to not spending money and saying no that it felt all wrong.  Luckily I’m doing much better since leaving my job – I now get how IMPORTANT it is to celebrate all our successes.  It gives us the motivation and impetus to keep achieving goals.  It makes you feel happy and gooey on the inside and your body craves more of that.  So let yourself feel good and feel like a hero.

Be kind to yourself.

Wx