Day 5: Finance

I have to admit that the fantastical day dreams I had as a wide eyed college graduate do not quite match up to my current financial state. I had pictured myself at this point being a high powered movie producer with a big house and a BMW M3 in the driveway. Truth be told, I have an apartment and a 2004 Nissan Xterra. The Xterra (or Xterror as I like to call it) serves as a mode of transportation to my day job as a Peterbilt truck salesman, but it also happens to hold the record as the most expensive Xterra ever sold!

Don't be misled here, there is absolutely nothing special about this truck! I paid $21K for it off the showroom floor in 2004. However, due to lack of experience, a bit of stupidity, and two ill thought out refinances I still owe $15,256 on the thing with a monthly payment of $486. When it is all said and done I will have paid around $54,000 for the damn thing. This is particularly vexing because a 2010 BMW M3 is $53,000! I will delve more into this topic later when I discuss why you should never refinance your vehicle and how Wells Fargo is the devil!

I digress from the point of my dreams and my reality not matching up. This is important because they definitely do NOT! Anyone who reads this that is in sales knows what the last two years have been like... shitty, What compounds this situation is that I had zero savings when I switched careers and moved into sales. For the greater part of the past two years I have been juggling credit cards and loans in order to get me over the proverbial "hump" to lay some solid groundwork with my finances. This elusive "hump" has yet to show up. In fact the only hump of any sort I have managed to locate is a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt that has been topped off by a flag that some crooked banker erected with a smile to read "Average APR 18.9%." Needless to say that this has done wonders for my credit score. The damage has been done though. I had spent the previous four years making up for horrible college credit card mistakes, and now I will be spending the next few on these.

In my darkest hour, when I was at least a month behind on just about every bill I have, I decided to take a stand. I took some very good advice and got some help straightening out my debt. I have been holding steady and have started to chip away a little bit at a time. In the coming months I am going to share with you what I have done to get my head back above water. I no longer feel lost and anxious when it comes to my debt. I am not where I envisioned myself 8 years ago, but that is okay for today. I still have some time to get that M3!

So here I am, a 29 year old impromptu mountain climber ready to scale that mountain of debt. The one thing I know for certain is that when I reach the top I too will erect a flag (after burning the current one) that will read "DEBT FREE."

Then... I will smile!