About

Nearly two years ago, my then boyfriend (now fiance) and I were living on opposite sides of the world. The trip from my house to his, took literally 30 hours and involved two plane rides, a bus trip and a couple of cab fares. He was very unwell and upset about us living so far apart and I was giving serious consideration to taking leave and getting on the first flight over there, worried about his health and the strain the distance between us was putting on our relationship.

I looked at my credit card balance and checked my savings. And came to the horrible realisation that I simply couldn’t afford the airfare. Not couldn’t afford in the I-can’t-justify-that kind of way. Not couldn’t afford it in the I-have-other-things-to-spend-the-money-on kind of way. I couldn’t afford it in that I just didn’t have that much money available – credit cards and lines of credit included.

This (unsurprisingly) alarmed me. I lived in a really nice house. I had a pretty damn good income. I had nice clothes and I threw pretty great (if I do say so myself) dinner parties and Sunday lunches. I had a really cute car I’d paid for in cash, for goodness sake! But, and I can say it now, I was living beyond my means.

So, I took a really deep breath, and added it all up. I was just short of $40,000 in debt without anything much to show for it. I was actually in a negative financial position, with more debt than assets.

I realised that if something terrible happened to my boyfriend and I needed to go to him, I’d have to beg, borrow or steal the money because I just didn’t have anything like that to hand. Imagine that – not being able to be with someone you love in a time of need, because you frittered away your cash on insignifiant things.

There were a lot of reasons I was in this sort of debt, and I’ll outline those in my blog over time. There were a couple of good reasons and a lot of bad ones. The thing that still gets me even today is that I didn’t really think it was that big a deal. Glamorous people on TV shows often say they’ve maxed out their credit card, my friends would occasionally make such references and I didn’t seem to be living a better life than anyone else I knew. Bottom line: I was in denial.

Today, just two years later, I’m a different person. Whilst I always used to draw up budgets (and wonder why I was getting further and further into debt and not less and less), now I know how to create a realistic and achievable budget and stick to it. I completely paid off all my consumer debt. That’s right – every last cent of that $40,000 is gone. I’ve bought my first house, and an investment property (with my fiance). My credit card is paid off in full every month. I no longer live payday to payday and consider it a victory when I have $20 left at the end of the month. Perhaps best of all though, I’ve learnt to define what being rich and wealthy really means to me so that I’ve been able to do all this without feeling like I’m depriving myself.

Now, I’m going to keep a blog, post on Twitter and write a book to tell everyone how I did it and how you can too.

If need be, you can contact me using (no kidding!) the contact me link at the top of any page.