The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Wow.. I haven’t updated my blog in ages. In fact, I forgot it existed for quite some time until I started recently follow a few personal finance blogs and remembered that I had started one myself. Reading through the old posts makes me cringe a bit, for a few different reasons. The first being that I’m definitely not Weir-obsessed anymore, so please excuse my former ramblings. #embarrassed

The second and even more cringe-inducing one is that I’ve barely managed to make a dent in my four cards. Let’s tot them up, shall we?

Card 1: $1,332.56

Card 2: $4,292.89

Card 3: $5,106.60

Card 4: $7,878.50

Terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad total: $18,610.55

What does this mean? In the two years since I’ve updated, I’ve actually managed to increase my total outstanding balance by $319.43.

Ouch.

But I’m back at it with a vengeance. I have a plan, and that plan is called the Snowball method. I obviously didn’t come up with it (I think that may be down to Dave Ramsey, actually) but I’m going to use it to dig myself out. If you’re not familiar with the concept, snowballing is essentially throwing all the money you can afford at the lowest balance, while continuing to make the minimum payments on all your other cards. When that “lowest” card is paid off, you add the payment from Card 1 to the payment to card 2, thereby increasing your monthly payments. You do the same until all balances are paid off.

Ideally, I will have my cards paid off in three years. I may be able to pull that off, I may not – as I’ve said before, I do love to shop. My life is generally sad, so sometimes buying myself a book or a bath ballistic from Lush makes me a little less miserable. I know that the happiness = things mindset is probably unhealthy and ultimately damaging, but seriously.. I’ve got nothing in my life, so oh well. 

Judge me all you want; you can’t be harder on me than I already am to myself.