What’s your tipping point?
I have used a credit card once in the past almost 4 years, and even that once is still making me cranky (it was paid off immediately, it just wasn’t worth the hassle for a free gift card I think). I plan to use a credit card one more time, within the next 5 days, to complete a balance transfer of my remaining credit card debt to a card with a 0%-interest-no-balance-transfer-fee offer, and then I’m not sure I’ll ever use one again. Maybe. Maybe someday when I’ve decided I behave responsibly with money. I never ever want to be in a position again where I have to pay credit card interest. I know there are rewards with credit cards when used responsibly and paid in full every month, I’m just not sure for me it is worth all the stress I have created for myself with them in the past.
What’s your tipping point? If you are one of the people who have had trouble with credit card debt in the past, what was your tipping point where you realized that you couldn’t continue to use credit cards and make any forward progress financially? I remember mine very well. I don’t know why it was the tipping point, for it wasn’t the first time I’d been in that situation, but it was.
I was sitting down to pay the monthly bills, and again, I didn’t quite have enough money to go around. I had two credit cards, and one had a huge (~$11,000) balance, and the other I had just finished paying off, again. It was a vicious cycle. I would pay off that card, then the next month end up writing a convenience check on it to pay the minimum payment on the other card, pay it off the next month, and run out of money and end up doing it again. We were no longer actively using the cards, which had gotten run up during my spouse’s unexpected unemployment, but we weren’t getting anywhere in paying them off either. This time, somehow, it was different. Maybe because I had just recently found out I was pregnant with our first child. Maybe it was because I’d had yet another discussion with my spouse about why we were short and I needed to use one card to pay the other. Whatever it was, this time it worked. That convenience check was the last one I ever wrote. Every month since then, I found a way to pay all the bills without resorting to moving credit debt around. Sometimes I was seriously holding my breath until payday, but we made it work. At first I was only paying a dollar or two over the minimum payment, but slowly the credit card debt started to shrink. Not quite four years later, we are currently at less than half of that high balance and going down faster every month. I hope to completely pay off that debt by this time next year.
I never ever want to be in that place again. I never want to feel trapped by debt and like I was drowning under it. I won’t say I will never use a credit card again once we are no longer in debt, but if I do, it will be paid off in full every single month and it will be in a responsible manner that adds to my life, not subtracts from it. We’ll see if I decide that the possible rewards are worth the risk.
What was your tipping point?
This post is inspired in part by Day 8 of NCN’s 33 Days series. Combined with the rumblings in my brain lately as my balance transfer date looms near.
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September 7th, 2007 at 11:05 am
My tipping point was a few months ago. We bought a new computer on a credit card in April, knowing that we had the money in the bank to pay it off in May.
Unfortunately May is when my husband lost his job, and we needed the money in the bank to survive.
I learned that you should never bank on the future, because you never know what will happen.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:14 am
The tipping point for me was the day I was thinking about my life and my debt (mortgage, credit cards, student loans) and the thought occurred to me - it’s like these people own me. We are working hard now to get to 100% debt free. When I get up in the morning, I want to know my efforts and actions that day will benefit me and my family, not my creditors.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
My tipping point was a series of clamaties that have befallen us this year. We started out the year with money in savings, and only 1 credit card approching being maxed out. Then the birth of my second child came with a 500.00 hospital bill that we did not expect. My husbands car needed electrical work. Our heater broke and with a new baby in the house we needed heat. But the straw that broke the camels back was when my husband wasn’t offered the teaching summer school position that we had banked on. That money that we expected to have to pay off all our debt wasn’t going to be there.
That’s when I got serious about paying off our debt and I took a long, hard look at how much we were bringing in, compared to how much was going out. I finally realized that we were only surviving month to month because we had credit cards.
Since then my transmission has gone out on my car, and today my hubby said the Tranny is going out on his car. We just can’t catch a break this year. But I am still on the path to being debt free. It just may take us a few years longer than I expected it to take. My hope is that one day I can sleep soundly without the worry of debt hanging over my head.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
The tipping point for me was when the love of my life said to me that I should be the one in charge of the finances in the family because I am a detail-oriented person. I thought to myself “Is he kidding?” because I had credit card debt that I had not really been paying down, and it was a lot, and I wasn’t so sure that I was going to be good at handling money.
Well, that did it. I read personal finance books, started reading tips about how to reduce expenses, and realized that I had to grow up and get a handle on it. Now I have motivation (to put us on better financial footing before we tie the knot) and also specific goals to save for.
Paying off debt is the main goal now! We will never be able to get ahead if I cannot slay the debt monster.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Thanks everyone for sharing where your tipping point was. It is a good feeling to know that so many people are out there fighting the fight with me.
Good luck to all of us slaying the debt monster!
September 10th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Great question. My tipping point was when I could not sleep well at night. No joke, I was so tired of my lifestyle that it was effecting sleep, among other things.
September 10th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I hear ya! I hear ya.