A lot of times, I’ll have these weird rants in my brain, where I’ll be like “this would be a great topic to talk about online”. Other times, I have just too many tabs open in my brain, and I need to get it out somewhere. And then, lastly, sometimes I just want to share some product, book, idea or something totally random and out of left field. That’s where the Stream of Consciousness came in. It’s a place where people who don’t know me, can learn more about all of the monkeys dancing inside my brain. Today, though? Oh, just a vent sesh about the economy from the viewpoint of a millennial living in the midwest, and how I can not understand how people are surviving…
Are you though? Are you all surviving?
Because to be completely honest, I sometimes feel like I’m the only one actually in debt. It’s so taboo to share about your money out loud, that most people just keep things quiet and silently drown in the piles of credit card bills and buy now pay later systems. One thing about me though, is that I’m not going to be silent. I’m going to definitely complain out loud so that everyone can hear me. I have tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, racked up all the way back to when I was married four years ago. Yep. Interest rates looked really good when I could spend so much money within a timeframe that granted me reward of some crazy amount of points that I could use towards “travel, shopping, etc”. You want to know what I did with those reward points? Bought stupid shit like Amazon gift cards, and then spent them on things I didn’t need, creating a cycle of overconsumption that wasn’t necessary.
So here’s the real deal. I want to release myself from the grasp of this damn monster that’s eating away at me every month. That monster would be named “interest rates” and he’s hellbent on ruining my bank account and my credit, and I invited him straight into my life thinking “this is a problem for future Jen”. FUTURE JEN IS NOT HAPPY RIGHT NOW.
The one plus side to this, is that it’s my new hyper fixation. My ADHD has decided that paying off debt is like a new life project and it’s all that I think about right now. Seriously. I’ve downloaded apps to do surveys to make money, I’ve signed up for work from home jobs, and I’m eliminating any and all activities that were planned this year that would drain my bank account except for TWO. One being Taylor Swift and the second being my WEDDING.
Let me be clear here… I do understand that I was spending beyond my means and that’s often how credit card debts can happen. One day it’s getting points and the next day you’re $50,000 (*I am not lol) deep in credit card debt looking like the United States government. (Except, theirs is in the trillions, right?) I just had this really horrid mindset around “I’ll put this on a card and pay it off later”, and then later came, and I’d repeated that too many times to be able to pay. While sometimes it was frivolous Amazon purchases or an unnecessary Target run, sometimes my debt came from groceries, bills, and trying to afford real life. I know we’re constantly told to “live within our means”, but sometimes the possibility of that just doesn’t exist in the moment. It’s “pay for a new tire” or “don’t get to work today”. It’s really sad that this is the world we’ve lived in, but in terms of my finances, I’m ready to make a change.
All this to say, that if you’re drowning, whether it’s $10,000 or $100,000 in debt, you’re not alone. At least, not totally alone. I’m here and I’ll row right along next to you and we can both watch our boats navigate the waves of debt until we’re back on solid ground.