The stress caused by Credit Card Debt

I'm going to start out with a post that really details the argument for WHY you need to do what you can do NOW to eliminate your credit card debt. This may get a bit long, but I'm going to talk about all of the things that having credit card debt does to your life. First and foremost on this list is the stress that credit card debt brings to your life. Why do you feel stress? Well.... let me tell you about our situation. I'm self employed and make around three thousand dollars a month. My wife has part time employment and full time Mom to our two children. So, for starters debt has had us second guess our decisions. Should she work full time? But then what about child care and those expenses? She would certainly prefer to be full time with the children, but... every time an opportunity comes up for more hours, even when it's doing something she doesn't want to do, we have to go through this thought process of "well we do NEED the money."

It's funny to me in some ways because if our credit card debt were retired by the wave of some magic wand we would be doing quite well. We'd have a good amount of savings each month and while we wouldn't necessarily be rolling in riches, we would be able to amass a pretty good savings pretty quickly. But those monthly payments of 300-800 to the credit card beast.... that is the problem. Because of that, we haven't had savings to speak of during our married lives. (Something that has got us into a pinch more than once and something that ALSO causes us worry and stress that we have little or no cushion against the unexpected.)

Given that I'm self employed and wasn't able initially (nor since, yet...) to really separate business/personal finances I'm also in the dilemma of constantly needing to have available credit on our cards. Some of my work involves the need to purchase supplies or equipment for projects for clients and in 90% of those cases if I can't buy the supplies then I can't do the project. So, I've needed to watch and make sure there's "headroom" on the cards to fund future work projects. At times that has become stressful simply because we've run so close to our credit limit that we haven't had much of any headroom.

I always had this fear in the back of my mind that at some point the credit card company (or companies) would decide to not reissue our card and require that we pay off our balance. This was (more or less) an irrational fear provoked by our situation, but.... it's fairly easy when you're at a disadvantage to someone or some company that you feel such phantom fears and doubts. What if they were to immediately demand payment in full? Well... to tell the truth they're more likely to want continual interest payments on the balance (reassuring isn't it???!?)

Stress.

Work.

Debt.

More work.

Stress.

We have for the most part declined opportunities at a vacation for several years now for a few reasons. First off, I have been adamantly devoted to try to make sure that I deal with any potential work for my clients as quickly and tirelessly as possible. Do I like the work that much? Probably not, but I feel like I NEED to because of our debt situation. I feel like I need to take those weekend calls and go above and beyond the call scheduling wise so that I can squeeze out every last potential drop of revenue to pay down our debts. Stressful? You think? I currently work probably close to 80 hours a week trying to keep up. If I don't have paying work I try to develop other streams of revenue that may pay off in the near future. I've become a workaholic because I feel like I need to.

Then there's the matter of other work, yard work, house work. In some cases I would be better off outsourcing SOOOOO many things to others. But, because of our debt I feel like I have to do it myself to preserve 100% of our money. I can't pay someone to do the yard because I have some time to do it. (No matter that it only happens every other or every third week because it takes several hours to do.) Usually, by the time I get to it, I'm beat out because I've been pushing to get my OTHER work done.

So, here's what debt forces you to do, rethink or second guess all of your income making decisions, it makes you feel guilty about leisure time (I really should be working to get us out of this.) It makes you less likely to take a real break from your work and keeps constantly reminding you about your finances. It's very much like a cancer on your finances because it's always there gnawing and eating away at your money (through your monthly payments), time, energy and even your health.

Many times I've felt as though we were in somewhat of a "bunker" mentality because of such long stretches of trying to spend as little as possible and make as much as possible to appease the credit card companies. These are among the reasons why I've started this site. It is such an oppressive feeling to be in debt I want to help others find their way out of it as we are doing.

So, here's the last thing that I'm going to write about how credit card debt stresses you out. Guilt. Yes, guilt. I have guilt over how we got into this situation. Maybe I shouldn't have been self employed. We should have separated the finances (realistically we didn't have enough liquidity to approach that even.) I shouldn't have spent the money. (Oh, I guess I shouldn't have bought groceries.... and had medical bills.) I'm stupid... that's all there is to it. Don't beat yourself up over being in debt. It happens, sometimes life just HAPPENS. That doesn't mean it's ALL your fault. What's important is what you do next. Do you sit and blame yourself or do you start making plans, taking steps and acting to fix the problem?

Okay then. Let's work to eliminate our credit card debt together! Stay tuned to this site for more.