When I moved to Chicago in 2008, I had zero credit card debt. Four years later I left with $10,000. You might be thinking, Holy irresponsibility! (Yup.) Or maybe you’re frantically checking your own credit card statement, feeling All the Bad Feelings. (Been there.) Either way, when this happened to me, I did not immediately create a budget or cut up my cards or tell a friend or seek money management advice…or consider my money habits or feelings in general. I just avoided the problem and assumed that one day I’d be able to pay off this debt.
And I did, eventually—but not because I buried my head in the sand until my fairy godmother waved her wand and cleared my balance. Chipping away at this debt took several years of hard work based on hundreds of tiny, proactive financial decisions. I didn’t win the lottery or get a massive raise at work or come into family money; I slogged through it, and most of the time it sucked. Have you ever heard that phrase “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”? For me, it was more like “No purchase feels as good as seeing a zero balance.”