You sound a lot like me.... big spender when young...blew through tons of money as a teen (I started workin' at age 14). Never saved anything till I turned 21 when I made the offhanded decision to sign up for the retirement plan at my new job on my first day. A year later, I found this forum (in 2005) and it all hit me...that I should save and not spend. It took many, many months just to start the habit of saving money for something other than retirement. It took another year to realize that credit cards were something I could no longer handle.
My husband and I married in 2006 when we were both 23. We were both very immature in handling money, and didn't like denying ourselves things (nothing fancy...just "things" we thought we couldn't do without). We very much desired to be "comfortable". Consequently, we had over $10,000 in CC debt by our 5 month anniversary (and we both worked full time jobs!), not including a $12,000 loan for a new car for him, a mortgage, and the loan on my own car. We cut up our credit cards in Nov. of 2006.
It has now taken us over 2 years to crawl out of our self-imposed hardship called "debt". Today we are FAR more comfortable than we were when we were racking up debt - and much less stressed.
I'm now 26 years old and have come full circle in my financial thinking over the past 4 years (thanks to this board!!!!). I fully regret not saving as a teen - but I also recognize that if one "realizes" all of this in their 20's and even early 30's, then that is a GREAT thing. I've seen many posts on here from people in their 40s & 50s who are *JUST* realizing what I had to learn, and they speak of much more "money" regret than I will ever have to endure.
You have a terrific start in life - the key is though is to "keep at it". Is everything as hard as it sounds? For the people who flit their money away without thought for the future - it may not appear "hard" for them today, but their lifestyle will eventually catch up with them. For you, if you remain steadfast in your plan to be financially sound, then things may be hard for a while, but you will reap wonderful rewards in the future. After the past 4 years, I'm just beginning to reap the rewards of good financial decisions I made back them. And it's only going to snowball from here.
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03-18-2009, 12:05 PM
