Blogging Through My Debt: Mistakes I've Made

In keeping with one of the points I listed last week, I wanted to write a little about my debt struggle as it stands as well as what I did to put myself in this position.  Currently, my situation is a little worse than where it was the last time I wrote a "Blogging Through My Debt" post.  While one of my credit cards remains paid off, and I've managed to both maintain my emergency fund and start a teeny-tiny miscellaneous savings fund, things aren't looking so great for my other two credit cards.  In regards to my Platinum card (which is the one I'm concentrating on paying off at the moment), while the balance may be less than what it was when I began this journey a few months ago, that's only because I managed to pay down that balance to a somewhat respectable amount before putting more purchases on the card in the past month.  My efforts, in the end, just canceled each other out.  And in regards to my Miles card, well on that I just spent more.  Plane tickets were purchased, household goods were bought, my balance skyrockets.

When the smoke cleared and I was forced to look at the damage I'd done, I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't upsetting.  This was a complete blow to my morale and I began thinking, "What's the point?  If all I'm ever going to do is continue to spend, why even bother trying to stop?  Why stress out about it and work overtime?  Why punish myself over this?  Why not just keep going on as I've been going on and just worry about it later?"

Obviously, I was having myself a big, whopping, self-denial-inducing, pity-party.

But that's passed and now I'm just trying to get back into the habit of not spending what I don't have.  It sounds simple enough until you actually get on with it, and then it's all, "Wait, why can't I buy those books again?  I could just pay it off later and, after all, payday is only a week away..."  And along with not spending all that "fake money" comes tackling the larger issues (who knew that there were larger issues here?): the actions and mistakes that have led me to where I am today.

First of all, I'm an emotional spender.  Some people are emotional eaters, some are just emotional period.  I am an emotional spender, meaning that when things get tough, I generally go shopping.  I've written on variations of this admission before, often saying that I shop when I'm stressed, and that's very true.  But I also shop when I'm upset or unhappy, and sometimes even when I'm bored.  I've been trying to find ways to redirect this energy, like going for a walk with my dog, or tackling more creative pursuits, but since this is one of the biggest hurdles I'm facing in my attempts to get out of debt, I felt it needed to be mentioned here. 

My second problem seems to be that I see travel as an excuse to commit murder.  I'd probably go so far as to say that more than half of my total credit card debt can be traced to travel of some sort.  Some of my more recent travel-related purchases have been trips home to Hawaii a few times a year, tickets I bought for my sister to come and visit me, trips back up to Seattle to visit friends (or to drive up to Vancouver for the Olympics...), our 2008 Ireland vacation, and our 2009 Pacific Northwest road trip.  And while I know that I can't really afford these trips, I've somehow convinced myself that they're not only necessary, but they're worth it because experiences gained through travel are invaluable.  It's a strange sense of entitlement I feel and it's something that I need to address now.

And finally, it's become my habit recently to use the fact that I'm "too busy" as a reason an excuse to stop budgeting.  I seemed to be doing great through April, but when work began spiraling out of control during May and through the beginning of June, budgeting was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about when I got home.  Because of that, I spent indiscriminately, checked my bank account infrequently, neglected to pay my bills on time, and began living (once again) paycheck to paycheck.  "I'm busy" can no longer be an excuse because, soon, "I'm busy" turns into "I'm broke" and then where will I be?  I got paid on Friday and, since it was the start of a new month, I began budgeting once again.  Hopefully this will be the start of getting back on the right track again.