Blogging Away Debt Blogging Away Debt follows real people on their journey to debt freedom — with tips on the debt snowball, budgeting, cutting expenses, and staying motivated.

by Hope

I am very smart and educated. I’m not saying that to brag, it’s just a fact.  I have plenty of things that I am terrible at too and I will readily admit them as well. But back to my being smart and educated.

My parents taught me from a very young age to manage my money – 10% to savings, 10% giving and the rest for me was a weekly mantra from the time I was old enough to get an allowance.  And they lived frugally, so frugally, it was painful even for me as I always felt like we were broke and didn’t have enough money to make ends meet.  I remember the 12 different stores mom would go to every week with coupons in hand to get the best deals on the healthy food.  And I remember, the heated discussions from behind closed doors.

I also worked from a young age, as soon as I could babysit, referee soccer games, work at fast food restaurants, I worked.  In fact, I don’t think I had more than a month of not working from the time I was 13 until I lost my corporate job a year after my youngest was born.  Then I tried the SAHM thing and knew it was not for me.

Despite all my parents’ efforts, somehow I missed the lesson on credit, so in college, like many that we hear about, I got into trouble with credit cards.  Lucky for me, the amount I owed was less than my car was worth so when I graduated and decided to move to Chicago to ‘save the world’ with my social work degree, I left my car behind which my parents sold for me and it paid off my credit card debt. (It really did cover the debt, they did not help me on that one.)

When I was married, I managed our money, paid the bills and a lot like Ashley’s Financial Relationship my husband was also self employed and he gave me the money we needed for our budget and kept the rest. We were relatively well off for a while, but in the end it was not a good situation, and obviously ended in divorce. (The finances were not a reason for the divorce, but did end up leading to a lot of resentment on both sides.)

So I’m getting to the point…all my God given smarts, all my education and all these life lessons, making and managing my money for so many years now and I’m still really horrible at it!  Really horrible!  I need a keeper, someone to put me on an allowance and take control of my accounts.  My self control is ….ugh!  I just keep hoping that getting out of debt is kind of similar to the tenets of AA (not comparing or belittling AA at all) – I hope the first step to recovery is admitting I have a problem.  I have a problem, a repetitive problem that just sabotages myself!

I’ve been reading a bunch of financial books and a few blogs and my continued favorite is Get Rich Slowly and this week I read this post: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2014/04/15/8-years-of-get-rich-slowly/. Did you read tenet #1? (Since reading this article I’ve been putting some thought into my own tenet’s, and wrote them out on my personal blog if you are interested.)

I’m focused and I’m determined but I’m still really, really weak.  This is why I’m always broke, always!  As soon as I get money I spend it…not on junk anymore, well, most of the time.  But I know like a dollar burning a hole in a child’s pocket that if I don’t get the bills and debt payments made, I will find somewhere else to spend it.  So it’s good for now, I have a goal and plenty of debt to keep my money occupied, but what about after?

How do you develop the self control to say no?  I’d love to hear your ideas on this one and in the next couple of months I will share what I have in mind especially since I plan to start saving with my new part time job that I wrote about earlier today.