The Broad Running Broad

As much as I don’t like to rush the end of summer – since I’d much rather deal with heat than the polar vortex the Midwest typically sees at least once during winter – I’m not bothered by August coming to an end.

If anything, the past two weeks of August have probably spawned a few stress highlights I have yet to discover.

I’ve referenced in previous posts about having some offline goals and not really knowing how those are going to turn out. As of this morning, I can finally tell you all the story of smashing one of those.

Back in 2022, when I was mourning my grandfather and not dealing with grief well (at all), one of my attempts at finding happiness came in the form of retail therapy, charging things that admittedly, I don’t even know why I wanted to buy in the first place. I didn’t think anything of it partly because of the grief, but also, I’d paid off the same credit card before and figured I’d just do it again someday.

That first time atoning for my credit card sins was back in 2020, right after the pandemic began. My money-judgy former boyfriend was putting conditions on our relationship that included me paying off the credit card, so I paid it off thinking it would prove how serious I was about us moving ahead in our relationship, as well as soothe his anxieties and make him happy. Spoiler knights and dames – it didn’t do a damn bit of good with his nagging or the relationship. Never try to appease the discontent.

I’m digressing. Anyways ….

Fast forward to 2022. It was a loop of charging, feeling disinterested and having no sense of urgency to course correct “since I’ve already done it before and I can just do it again.” But what I failed to take into account was just how off the rails I’d gone with the charging. I didn’t max the card out, but the amount on the card plus the interest meant it would take years for me to pay off. After admitting the amount to my mom – likely causing a few stress highlights to sprout on her – and talking through the options, I decided to go to my bank and have the credit balance transferred to a personal loan. The interest rate on the loan was lower, and I would be able to get off the depression loop hamster wheel and pay it back.

I signed the papers and took out the loan on September 22, 2022. The life of the loan: three years, primarily to keep the monthly payments low with a plan to eventually pay double and pay it off sooner. What constituted “sooner” was never determined.

Yesterday morning, on August 29, 2023 I made the final payment.

The loan that has been an albatross around my neck is no more.

Initially when I first took out the loan out, I felt hopeless, sorry for myself. In December of last year I decided to start applying $100 each week in addition to the monthly payment. Financially I was able to swing it, and if it helped pay the loan off faster, why not?

The weekly payments continued into 2023, and with each week as the total on the loan went down, I felt a little more triumphant. In mid-March I got the news I was going to be laid off from OldJob. The very first thing I did after that phone call was to curl up on my couch and have a good cry. Then it was to panic. Then I got over myself and decided there was no way I was going to let this throw off my goal to pay off the loan. The next day I had an appointment at my bank to move some money from an old savings account over to the loan. That payment was enough to push my next due date back to January of 2024. In the worst case scenario of being unemployed, I bought myself time that thankfully I never needed.

Skipping ahead to late July, I was thinking about a lifestyle change, as well as my student loan repayments starting in October. I didn’t want two loans going at the same time and frankly, if I did have to pay on both, the lifestyle change wouldn’t be able to happen. I had already decided come hell or high water I was ending 2023 with all of my financial goals met and moving to the next level, so it was time to go back to the drawing board. Although I haven’t been a regular listener of him in years, I remembered what Dave Ramsey says about debt snowballs and debt avalanches. I looked at the calendar and going conservatively – you know, slow and steady winning the race – meant that I could pay off the loan by the one year anniversary, in September 2023.

But I’m a Sagittarius. All that fire in our souls doesn’t let us do anything conservatively. We don’t go in at all or we burst through the walls like the Kool-Aid man and get it all done in one dramatic but finishing, victorious shot.

So I looked at my checking, the big savings and the sinking fund and decided to move the remaining amount of the loan from each of my pots. I’ll admit part of the stress was looking at the big savings and battling with myself if I really wanted the account to get that low, which would have happened if I decided to pay the loan off in one big splash. The original plan was to snowball it, but then I remembered who I am and that goal I set for myself by the end of the year. Before pressing “transfer” I was nervous; the next morning I felt relieved, like a weight was lifted off my shoulders to not see an outstanding loan amount.

There was no snowballs or avalanche this past month. It was a Debt Tsunami – I was coming in fast, strong and leaving no one alive in my personal warpath against that stupid loan. And I’m going to say it was worth it.

This whole adventure of getting myself into a mess and having to tsunami through it taught me a lot about spending habits, my own motivations and candidly, some of the fears that should have never entered the equation. In a future post I’ll share those lessons. But for tonight, I’m just going to relax and celebrate the fact it’s done. I can rest as I’m heading out of August and focus on the next move, whatever that looks like.

So Reader-friends, may this story of rectifying misguided decisions serve as inspiration that difficult and impossible are not one in the same. Or maybe this whole post will make you feel better about yourself. Either one’s fine. I just want you to win at life.

Yours in writing and triumph,

Allison