I had a mini-meltdown today on the phone with my husband. I can’t take the stress of not enough income anymore. His work has been so unproductive, we’ve put the mortgage on the credit card four times during the past year. Twice during the past 3 months. Next week may make it one more time.
It all comes down to $13.74 a day October 9, 2007
I am going to use a little math to show my husband just exactly how that “little bit of money” does really make a difference.
If you add up our home equity loan and our credit card debt, we owe $45,000. Gulp! That’s where the sick-to-my-stomach feeling comes in. I was driving to work this morning when I allowed myself to realize that our “home equity” loan was really just a PC way of saying unsecured debt which we rolled over into our mortgage. I wanted to pull over to the side of the road and cry. Especially because I don’t know how we are going to pay the mortgage next week.
How could this happen? How?? I am a smart, well-educated woman who was raised better than this! I kept my eyes focused straight ahead and practiced long, slow breathing to get myself calmed down. Then I thought it through.
Our debt really started nine years ago when we bought our house, which was a good deal, but which we obviously couldn’t afford. At the time I was staying home with our 2-year old and newborn. No income there. My husband was (still is) self-employed. Unpredictable income there. Therefore when an emergency expenditure came up or he had a slow week or two, it went on the credit card. WHATEVER “it” was. What do you mean we owe $8,000 in taxes? Credit card. Our car died unexpectedly and we can buy another one for $1,800? Check to the credit card. No money for groceries? Credit card. You get the idea.
Okay. So how, in just nine years, do we end up with $45,000 worth of debt? Let’s break it down. $45,000 over 9 years = $5,000 per year of accumulated debt. $5,000 per year/52 weeks = $96.15 per week. 52 weeks/7 days per week = $13.74 per day. That how much more we were spending over what we were earning.
If we only had spent $13.74 less per day, we would not be in this huge hole. $15.00 less per day, and we would even have over $4,000 sitting in our bank account right now as an emergency fund.
This, I can handle. While it will still take us years to dig out of the debt we currently are in, my goal right now is to not incur any more debt. Cutting $13.74 out of our spending per day keeps us out of further debt. That’s only $6.87 each!
I do realize this way of breaking it down is a little simplistic, but I can wrap my mind around this concept. $45,000 makes me weep. $6.87? Chump change!
