It's no secret that I've been a little down on the debt front since we moved. In my last post I talked about how we were getting back on track which was immensely helpful in regaining a positive feeling about our debt reduction efforts. Something else happened last week that was also key to my turnaround in attitude...
Someone left me a comment on one of my posts! The comment went something like this: "Dear Person in Debt, I want to inform you of an amazing opportunity to borrow money at an insanely low interest rate from my top notch international firm." Except the actual comment was full of improper grammar and misspellings. Sounds a little too good to be true and a little too much like the e-mails I get from time to time from royal foreigners who would like to send me millions of dollars for helping them with some small task. (I did not publish the comment if you were wondering or looking for it, btw)
Anyhoo, why did that give me a morale boost, you ask? Because it reminded me that my bottom was not as bad as it could have been. I realized I had a problem before the problem got so out of control that I had missed payments, bankruptcy, ruined credit, collections, turned to cash advance places or shady loan propositions, or started hitting up relatives for loans (minus the small $600 my parents lent me). Looking back I know I was on the brink of those things when I started this journey back in 2011. I could have just as easily stayed on the path I was on. In many ways staying on the path I had been on would have been way easier, changing my long ingrained habits and discovering uncomfortable truths about myself has been a difficult journey.
It reminds me of something a friend once told me about struggling with addiction, she believed you didn't have to hit bottom to make a change, that the struggle was more like an elevator where you could choose to get off on any floor instead a free falling all the way to the sub-sub-basement. Although her situation was different than mine, that analogy has stuck with me and seems fitting of my journey. I'm thankful that I got off the elevator three years ago and have been "climbing the stairs" back up to the top floor ever since. There will be times that I have to stop and take a breather but eventually I'll make it!
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