Financially Challenges

There's this awesome blog that I subscribe to, called Enemy of Debt. Last week he posted about what your biggest financial challenges are that get in the way of you being successful financially and paying down your debt. Just a few days ago he actually posted a poll about it, and his choices were:

What About Becoming Debt Free Challenges You the Most?
	Sacrifice
	Teamwork
	Eating Out
	Instant Gratification
	Impulsive Spending
	Motivation
	Unexpected Emergencies
	Budgeting
	Income
	Accountability
	Savings
	Fear
	Patience
	Minimum Payments
	Methodology
	Family
	Denial
	Behavioral Change
	Addiction
	Lifestyle
	Anxiety
	Confidence
	Procrastination
	Mindset
	Being a Single Parent
	Medical Condition
	Disability
	Unemployment
	Poverty

I was going to skip over the poll, but decided that it would be good to choose some exact language that would allow me to put into words the reasons why I have not become debt free and having made it a priority. Here is what I responded to in the comments section, to the blog author named Travis:

Travis, I was about to skip over your poll (since I had already commented on the first post that you mentioned about biggest challenges). But then I thought to myself, “Well, if there is any good time to concisely identify what my challenges are that keep me from being debt-free, now’s as best of a time to do it. And so, I picked:

*Sacrifice

*Instant gratification

*Impulsive spending

*Budgeting

*Procrastination

In selecting these, I realize that the reason I haven’t made debt repayment and budgeting a priority is because — DRUM ROLL, PLEASE– I don’t want to. Simply put, I don’t want to. Dave Ramsey talked about this in one of his Podcasts that I listened to recently. He said something like, the only time you will become debt free is when you’ve had ENOUGH. When you have hit rock bottom and you can say, “Okay, this has got to STOP!!!!!” And when he said that, it hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m not there yet. And the reason why I am not, is because I don’t feel like I am drowning in debt. For some reason, in my head, I believe I have told myself, “Okay, so I have $3,700 in credit debt…..That’s unlike me [since I have been known to pay off balanced each month, but after buying our house, it's risen], but since there are others who have THOUSANDS of credit debt, my situation really isn’t THAT bad….”

And I tell myself, “Yeah, I’ve got $27,000 in school loans, but check out those people that have $50,000–now THAT is a lot of school loan debt! Nah, I’m not doing too bad…..”

How can I make debt repayment a priority when I am not “there” yet, as Dave Ramsey would say? How can you admit you need to make a change when you don’t feel like you have a HUGE problem??

So, what I do is procrastinate in creating a meal plan, which I KNOW would lower my food expenses so that I could have more money to pay down debt…….I allow myself impulse buys (mind you, impulse buys for me means buying whatever I want at the grocery store, or spending $10 on pizza or something “frivolous” like that…..Because, another lie I tell myself is, “Well, it’s not like I’m at the mall spending impulsively on clothes worth hundreds of dollars. All I’m doing is buying food, and what’s $5 here or $10 there?”

Anyhow, would love to keep expanding on this, because it’s actually pretty therapeutic, but I think I’ve taken up a lot of space already! LOL

Thanks for allowing me a chance to become introspective about what’s really going on with me financially!!!!

Serena

Posting that really has made me become aware of the fact that I don't think of myself as having a bad situation. I think my debt is low, my spending is average, and that it's normal to have school loans, and that at least they aren't as huge as SOME people's.

But my thinking is all wrong! It's not about comparing myself to other peoples' situation. It's about knowing where I want to go, what I want to do, and what I want my financial life to look like. And I have lost sight of that.

I think about people like my friend, Hakimah, who has $30,000 in credit card debt. Actual credit debt. And who is in school and gets $4,000 refund checks and either lives off of that or uses some of it to pay for her daughter's private school tuition, which she really has never been able to afford. I compare myself to those people who you hear about that have tons of credit debt, are about to lose their homes, that have not a dollar left over, etc. etc. And I think, "well, I don't have it quite so bad."

So I allow myself to buy the food that I want at the grocery store, and to have no menu to plan from when I grocery shop. I allow myself to spend $3.99 on a bag of Oreo cookies (oh, the HALLOWEEN edition!), even though I just bought a bag of them several days ago (we crushed them), and don't care that I just wasted $8.00 this week on cookies. That $8.00 could have gone towards paying down debt.

It sounds like pennies, compared to a $27,000 school loan bill, however, that $8.00 coupled with $10 I just spend tonight on pizza at Little Cesars, and the $11 that I spend last night on Brother's pizza on the drive home from Hagerstown, and right there I just spent $29! That's substantial! But I don't see it that way. Well, I haven't been....

Until now.

This moment was pretty defining....realizing that my problem is that I don't think I HAVE a problem, thus the reason I overspend on junk, instead of using that money to pay down debt. Debt is debt. It doesn't matter that mind is "only" $3,700. Without comparing myself to anyone else, hell yeah, that is a shit-load of debt, as well as the $27,000 in school loans.

Going forward, I am going to be at rock-bottom. I have to be, in order to pull myself out and to continue striving to be financially independent.