Getting Out of Debt: The Bucket List Goal to Make All Other Goals Possible

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Getting Out of Debt: The Bucket List Goal to Make All Other Goals Possible

This post was previously published on the BucketList.org blog in September 2014.

I’ve been racking up debt since college. A few years after graduation, I had over $42,000 of it, from student loans, a new car and the day-to-day reliance on credit. Over 1,500 BucketList.org users have “getting out of debt” as a goal, so we are not a small tribe.

After getting out of debt in 2013, I can definitively say that this is the one goal that will make many other goals possible.

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Credit Card Debt $0

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Credit Card Debt $0

Ironically, two months before I planned to pay off my credit card debt, my number was stolen and used to make $200+ in purchases at two Target stores in Colorado. It’s been years since I’ve shopped at a Target and I’ve never even been to Colorado, so it’s odd to think of my credit card living a life of shopping thrills without me. I’ve put the expenses into dispute with my credit card company and, with any luck, I won’t have to pay them.

In the meantime, I’ve paid off my credit card debt!

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Debt milestone: less than $10,000 left

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Debt milestone: less than $10,000 left

I hit another milestone today: my total debt is under $10,000! I’m heading toward a seven-year low mark and I’m just doing full-on battle with the beast.

Since studying abroad in college, I’ve carried credit card debt. It ballooned when my income increased, a typical example of lifestyle inflation. Two years after graduating from college, I bought a brand new car and my student loans came due, all within the same summer.

See that big spike in the chart below?  Yeah, I’ve been recovering from that since 2005.

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