Being free of my credit card debt is a huge relief and I have never gone into exact detail about my debt free journey up to this point. Out of shame, I haven’t told the whole truth. I’ve always been in debt–in some shape or form– since college. Back in 2007, I declared Chapter 13 bankruptcy because I had too much consumer debt, I had lost my job and I felt like I did not have a choice. I didn’t want to lose my car and any other assets I had so I thought Chapter 13 was the safest way to go.
The truth is you are doomed to make the same mistakes if you don’t learn from them. After a life-changing event in late 2017, I realized that I needed to be open with my finances with my spouse. You would think that I would’ve learned that when two become one in marriage, it also means finances too. Even though I portrayed an image of having it all together, I was selfish and immature. There was a lot I needed to learn about myself and unfortunately, I desperately craved unhealthy attention. My spending reflected my own insecurities. Since I came from the financial services industry, I desperately sought the next opportunity or shuffled credit card debt in attempts to convince others and myself that I knew exactly what I was doing.
At the end of 1/31/2018, I laid my finances bare not just to my sweet wife, but also one of my trusted mentors/older brothers. He looked at my finances and was amazed that my debt had grown back to the level it was. On one of my most recent opportunities, I had decided to take out a pay day loan to buy a crypto mining machine. He understood that I was choosing to use debt to fund an asset to generate positive cash flow, but he said to me if he had known my financial condition, he wouldn’t have advised it. To correct my mistake, we worked out a deal where he would buy my miner from me to add to his existing miners and pay off the pay day loan.
We wrote up a contract, and I made sure my wife agreed before signing any paperwork. I realized going forward that my wife had to see and understand every financial decision that affected us. Below as of 1/31/2018 was our debt:
As you can see, my journey to be debt free required an amazing amount of hard work and sacrifice. None of it could have been done without my wife. Even though I am debt free of my credit cards, our journey isn’t over. My finances are not mine anymore. When I became married, it became our finances. As you can see above, I adjusted the finances to include our debts. This month, we decided to go looking for houses. I didn’t feel comfortable with looking for a house because I did not like yardwork and I didn’t know if we were financially ready; however, with our baby coming in June, I know that we need more space that our current apartment supplied. With our current living situation in mind, we started looking at houses. I learned many new things about my wife in this process. I never knew she loved cul-de-sacs! The first house we saw we put an offer on and quickly learned how being approved for financing and the timing of your request was important. After viewing a few houses and our most recent open house visit, I told my wife not to settle on what she wants in a house. I suggested that we build instead. After living in our apartment for nearly 3 years, I had a good grasp of our combined income due to having a budget. Being free of credit card debt, I believed we were able to be able to make this next step.
If you want to learn more about the self-lending principle or if you need a financial check-up then contact me
This month’s video is WHY MOTIVATION ISN’T WORKING FOR YOU *watch to the end* from the Mulligan Brothers YouTube channel.
“The LORD will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.”
Deuteronomy 28:12 NLT
http://bible.com/116/deu.28.12.nlt
I believe in your journey to….
A Debt Free Me
Pursuit of Excellence 
Leave a Reply