How I screwed up my debt reduction plan for 2009
After I discovered that I only reduced my total credit card debt by $500, and added $1,500 to a high-interest Discover Card account, I started thinking about what I did wrong. I made $65,000 in 2009. I should have saved much more. Where did the money go?
Unfortunately, I kept horrible records, but I started thinking about where and how I spent my paycheck.
I didn’t go on any major vacations in 2009. In fact, for the first time in many years, I didn’t go snow skiing because I wanted to avoid paying $75 for lift tickets and hotel rooms.
My one major purchase was an LG flat screen TV. My 12 year-old Mitsubishi CRT television died in October 2009. I installed a TV tuner card in my PC and planned to watch television on my 19” Benq LCD computer screen.
But it didn’t work. The tuner card was not compatible with the cable set top box and I could only get the basic broadcast channels. I had also been drooling over flat screen TVs for several years. I finally broke down and spent $820 on a 42” LG LCD television. I wound up using some emergency funds and avoided putting this purchase on a credit card.