“Hi, I’m Satina, and I’m from Vallejo, California and this is my debt story week one.
How did I get into debt? Well, when you have major credit cards that’s $10,000 plus and throughout the years you’re just charging for miscellaneous things. Some things you need, some things you don’t, but still it’s okay. You’re able to handle the monthly payments. You still have great credit. You still have a lot of availability, and life is good. You’re not worried about it.
In 2014, my father passed and I used some of my credit limit to pay for my portion of his funeral expenses, and still life was good. Then my team was disbanded, which means I received a severance package, so still no sweat. I’m still paying my household bills, but then I started using my credit cards for day-to-day activities, like for gas, for food, and not to mention still helping others, like my son.
Then you get into this depression and you do mad spending and then you’re spending items that you don’t need. And then next thing you know you have these credit cards with low availability but high monthly payments, which started off $35, $45 a month, increased to like $400, $500 a month. So imagine you have five cards with at minimum $350 a month in credit card payment plus your household expenses plus you’re living off your savings now, and, well, what do you do? Something has to give.
So what I did was I just stepped back, took a look at all my expenses, what I need, what I don’t need, and I had to cut back on a lot of things. So getting my hair done – cut out, getting my nails done – cut out, helping people that I normally would help and they used to me helping, I had to say no, which was very hard for me because I’m a very giving person. I would give my last, but I just didn’t have a last to give.
So I knew something had to be done. So my goal is to or was to look and see what I can do to get my head back above water, because right now it was to here. And now I look into some other options and I’ll let you know what actions I took in week two. See you soon.”
Click here to watch episode 2 of Satina’s journey and find out what she did next on her debt-free journey!