Pimp Your Finances

In one of my first posts, I started a series called “Get out of Debt!“.  It chronicles my quest to pay off all my consumer debt.  All $10,793.86 of it.

All of it is on 0% interest cards, but I’m still uncomfortable having any debt, let alone that much.  It’s manageable now, but if something happened to my health or job, I’d be screwed.

So I decided to get out of debt as soon as possible.  I’ll sleep better at night without it, and I could use the extra money to generate wealth.  I’m treading water now, but I’m not getting anywhere.

I track my debt in real time, but this is the first update on the site.  After 75 days, I’ve paid off 4.68%, or a little more than $500. 

I thrive on visual motivation, so I put together a graphical summary of my progress:

Each square in the “Credit Cards” section represents 4% of my original debt.  As I pay down more debt, I change the color of the squares from red to green.  My one green square is looking lonely, but I’ll add more soon.

Paying off only $500 in two and a half months may not seem like much, but I’d like to give it some context.  In October, I got married.  I went on my honeymoon in November.  My wife and I paid for the wedding and honeymoon ourselves, and we did it without generating more debt.  I’m proud of that.  We even did some major home improvements before the wedding, like building a 400 foot fence, without using credit.

So ideally I would have paid off more by now, but I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished given the circumstances.  I’m expecting things to move a lot more quickly in 2009.

Do you have any tricks you use to motivate yourself to pay off debt?