... And We Suck

It's been a weird couple of months here in the ol' debt lodge (that's what we're calling our tiny attic apartment now, just decided). Keri went to work in NYC for two weeks, Dylan started an online class, the tax refund came and went and we sucked. Right after we recieved our tax refund Dylan realized he probably needed to complete his Marist degree so that extra money went to paying for a course called Theme's in Early Religion, because Dylan is super into Native American religious ceremonies. The rest of that cash went to eating our feelings and to renting movies on Amazon. We sucked.

We were very down about our progress and realized we weren't ferociously attacking our debt like we'd promised (and effing need too). So we decided to dip into our emergency fund to pay off Dylan's credit card in full, over $2,000 (see video below). We basically gave ourselves a much deserved punch in the gut. This snowball thing will only work if we push beyond our comfort level and stop spending our dough on cookies and pizza.*  

That gut punch was tough to swallow because we had built up an emergency fund that we were happy and comfortable with. We call it our "zero" and now we feel like we are in the red.  Before this Dylan's zero used to actually be $0 then over time it moved up to $100, $500, $1,000 then eventually we combined our efforts to have a "zero" of $10,000. It took a lot to build up that 'in case' fund and dipping into it was not easy. But it puts us back in the right mode of urgency and forces us to actually follow our budget. 

Honestly it's all about disipline. So this month, though we kind of sucked, we didn't let ourselves get away with it. We are our own babysitters and we just needed to take a time out.  We had to follow our previous advice of not paying for entertainment and start enjoying readily available free things. Now once a week we get to read from Dylan's book for his Religion class - The Sacred Pipe. Last night we got to hear the graphic and unsettling Native American tale about a girls first period. YAY!!!

We don't know if this update was helpful or interesting, but it is the truth. Our posts are a good metaphor for our current debt progress, infrequent and depressing. Take what you will from it, but we hope it helps y'all realize paying debt is a long, challenging journey to freedom. Go for it --- and may The Great Lakota Spirit be with you. 

*Keri's attempt at a joke