Up and Down [and all around]

I find it both funny and frustrating how up and down this debt-free journey is for me. The up side: I decided to save $125 and cancel my hotel reservation for the night before a training that is being held 2 hours away from home. My initial plan was to drive down the night before so that I wouldn’t be as stressed about traffic and making it on time. Plus, it’s a really great hotel. But this afternoon, I got to thinking and I asked myself, “Is it worth $125 to be able to sleep in a little and avoid some stress?” In the past, I would have said yes – and I actually already said yes, since I booked the hotel when I was already on this debt-free journey. I justified it by saying that I don’t have many opportunities to splurge, I get really stressed when dealing with driving that has a deadline – especially in a much more urban area than I’m currently used to, and to be honest, I WANTED to stay in a hotel. It’s fun to check in and hang out in the room and have someone else take care of breakfast. And so I decided that no, it’s not worth $125. Also, I will save money by eating dinner at home the night before instead of buying dinner out while at the hotel.

The down side: on Monday, I was feeling really down. I had to take my car in to the dealership for a recall – and I knew it would take at least a couple days to inspect and repair. The dealership is awesome and gave me a courtesy car [same model as mine!], but it makes me nervous to drive a loaner. And I had a headache and my day had not been great and I was stressed. I’m sad to say that I basically said, “Forget it! I want to buy some things and don’t have the cash for it and I don’t care.” So when I put gas in the loaner [because I live 30 miles away] and then went to the grocery store, I used my credit card. Sigh. And then I was so intrigued about the new show on Fox [‘911’] that was being hyped on Facebook, that I ordered Season 1 on Amazon, which automatically gets charged to my Amazon credit card.

I’m just finding it hard to stay motivated ALL THE TIME. Part of it is that I only get paid once a month, so I don’t have the satisfaction of making more than one monthly payment towards debt. Part of it is that I’m single, I live far away from my family, and I’m a serious introvert – and so I tend to use shopping as a way to fill the void. One more part is that I still don’t think my emotional brain is fully onboard with this debt-free journey. A big reason I’m in debt is because I tend to buy things to make myself happy – and I still fight that impulse almost everyday. And it’s so frustrating to continually say no to myself when there are things I want to buy.

I guess for now, I will count every success and smart choice and try not to beat myself up for the poor choices. I am doing MUCH better than I did before I began this journey to becoming debt-free, and I need to remember that. And I’m actually [mostly] excited to use my tax refund to almost pay off one credit card – which will be a big win. One other win that happened recently is that I consolidated my student loans to lower my monthly payments. I know I’ve heard from some people that consolidation isn’t a good idea [and if I only paid the minimum payment until it’s paid off, it would take 20 years and I would pay an astronomical amount of interest]. But I also know myself – and my previous payment was so high that my debt snowball would be much smaller, and so I wouldn’t see progress on my other debts as quickly. And given my history, I know that I need to see progress to help me stay motivated. So far, it does seem to be mostly working. I’m excited to pay off one credit card, then attack my Amazon card, and then move on to the other cards.

How do you stay motivated? What do you do when you fall off the wagon?

The Intelligent Zebra