Our Story, Part 2: a debt needing to be repaid

So Julie and I became engaged in August 2007, and at that point, I was still struggling with about $3,000 in credit card debt.  This was, after all, the summer of the original iPhone craze, and I had decided that I had to have one.  So, I had been moving stuff around to make that work (after already accumulating a fair amount of other unnecessary purchases), but all I was really doing was denying the truth: I needed to get rid of the debt, but I was somehow just figuring that it was going to go away.  What’s worse was that I hadn’t shared this with Julie and it was really starting to wear on me.

It was sometime in late August, and for whatever reason, the conversation happened.  And I am so glad it did.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was really, really tough to do.  I was basically admitting the mistakes I’d made with money and that I had brought into our relationship.  I don’t remember where we were going, but we ended up in a parking lot and the subject of money came up.  I knew Julie had absolutely no debt and was really thoughtful about the way she handled her money, and it was probably going to hurt her that I had been keeping this information from her.  We weren’t married yet, but were starting to transition toward treating our finances as a joint venture.

Julie took it as well as anyone could. I was basically dropping a bomb on her, and although she was definitely disappointed, I could tell it was something we were going to work through together.  By the end of what was really a fairly brief conversation I had decided that it was something that I needed to be rid of by the time we were married.  Thankfully I was able to move it to a 0% credit card whose interest rate would not adjust before our wedding day.  I set up automatic payments from my checking account which repaid $75 of the debt each week (I must have put a little bit up front as well).  I also vowed that I wouldn’t use a credit card the same way anymore.  Julie helped me get set up with Quicken, and I started tracking my income and expenses each month.

By February of the next year (2 months prior to our wedding) the debt was gone, and it was a celebration.  I had made a major change in the way I approached life and money, and I was so proud to be anticipating our marriage with a newly clean slate.
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Check back each Friday as we continue this series, “Our Story.”