Editors note: I met Adam a while back and this weekend he was telling me his story so I asked him if he would be comfortable writing a gust post for our site, luckily, he said yes. Here is his story:
My family and I used to be swamped with credit card debt, by following some of the methods to reduce credit card debt found on the Vanquish Credit Card Debt site we were able to reduce our debt and eliminate almost all of our credit card debt.
Why am I writing about almost eliminating my debt? I recently lost my job due to downsizing and the unemployment compensation I am getting would not cover our monthly expenses. Or at least it wouldn't have. We have been working on eliminating the credit cards debt that has accumulated over the year because we wanted to start saving for our first house. If we hadn't taken these steps to reduce our debt, we would have had to file bankruptcy and your chances of getting a house after that (within our 2 to 3 year time frame) are slim to none.
Getting started done the road to debt reduction was not easy, we had not idea where to start. We discussed the ease with which we could use the snowball method but we had no way to get the ball rolling. Due to sub standard pay at a previous employer we had no savings to speak of, and we had already cut just about every extra expense we had. We didn't know where the money was going to come from but we knew we had to do something. Then we did our taxes. We saw the refund we were going to get back and we knew it would help us get going.
The first thing we did, when we knew for sure how much we were getting back, is we planned out where the money had to go, we opted to take out one of our biggest expenses (our car) first, the hit the smallest credit card to get rid of it and throw the rest at the next smallest one. Although some experts will tell you to eliminate the larger cards first because they accumulate the most interest, we found that by paying off the lowest balances first we would have more money to put towards the larger one.
These are the steps we took and the results that were coming about from them. Had we not taken these steps, taking it for granted that my job was going to be stable, we would have been in much worse financial shape. Losing a job is not easy to get over, especially when you are the sole provider for your family. Although I am delving into internet marketing, it is not paying off yet and I cannot sit around and wait for it to payoff so I am in the job market. Being unemployed and living well below where you used to it is very tempting to go back to relying on those credit cards to retain that level of comfort. I will admit we have started to use them again, but only for essential items, such as food and gas, and only until unemployment kicks in.
I hope you are able to take away from this post the importance of being debt free, and I hope you will work towards eliminating your own debt. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story and God Bless!
-Adam
Adam is a web developer and internet researcher who is logging his progression into internet marketing at his blog passivedisposableincome.com.
