First of all…I can’t believe I had a credit card for that long. What I really can’t fathom though is that for all of those 18 years, this card always had a balance.

And that balance wasn’t always insignificant! There were times when it was over $15,000. The annual percentage rate (APR) had been around 16%.

In interest alone, I was probably paying about $2,000 a year!

I estimate that over the years, I paid over $30,000 in interest charges on that damn card.

Here is the most recent statement, with the balance and my payment to knock that balance down.

Why wasn’t I able to pay off my credit card earlier?

No matter how hard I “tried”, it just never seemed to go away. There were some years when it got alarmingly high, so my wife and I decided that we needed to pay a big chunk when we got some extra money, like with an annual bonus that I received, or when we got an income tax refund.

But it never seemed to go away.

Why did my credit card haunt me with a constant balance?

Looking back now, as I’ve tried to put things in perspective…I’ve figured out the major reasons why I had such a large credit card debt.

I was living beyond my means

Clearly I had a problem. If anyone has a credit card debt that they want to pay off, but don’t or can’t, that’s a problem. Over all of those 18 years, my income during my career went higher and higher and higher…and still, I couldn’t seem to pay it off.

I think it has to do with human nature in general. We have unlimited wants and limited means. As soon as I made more money, I spent more money – using the credit card not on “everyday” purchases, but bigger ticket items (because I had no cash savings).

• Vacations
• Home improvements
• Holiday presents
• Electronics

I put my head in the sand

I knew I shouldn’t be using the card as we were, but I kept doing it. My wife did the online-bill paying. There were periods of time where maybe 6 months would go by and I didn’t want to know or didn’t ask what the balance was. I knew it was bad and probably growing.

Sometimes I would grit my teeth and ask what the balance was. I think at one point it was $18,000. During those rare conversations with my wife about the credit card, at that point we discussed how to get the balance down. I would be getting an annual bonus from my job…maybe we could take half or a quarter of it and pay down a decent chunk of the balance.

And the remaining balance? Sometimes decided to pay something like $800 a month to work the balance down and try not to use the card.

But there was no follow-through. Maybe a month or two later, the $800 a month plan was out the window, forgotten. “Forgotten” by me. I never talked about it again, which is unfair to my wife (more on that below) because she saw that balance grow and kept the burden on herself.

The focus was on paying off balances with a higher interest rate

Typically, the advice is to pay off the credit balance that has the highest interest rate. For instance, If you have multiple credit cards, pay off the credit card with the higher interest rate first.

Of course…that’s common sense. That is the account that is costing you the most in interest, based on the balance.

On paper, this makes sense. But we aren’t Excel spreadsheets…we are humans with emotions with fears and desires. It makes logical sense, but in some ways, I don’t think this is the best advice.

Why?

When you are under the burden of debt, it seems insurmountable. We had another credit card with a smaller balance… we also had an “overdraft” credit account attached to our checking account that had a credit balance.

The amounts were smaller than the big balance credit card.

It would have felt good to simply eliminate the balances of those smaller credit accounts.

The feeling of accomplishment of eliminating a credit balance is an amazing feeling (I realize that now). It makes you feel good about yourself. It makes you feel like you are getting somewhere, washing the slate clean, by removing one of several credit balances.

Doing this can help build momentum and resolve to continue to then attack the larger balances.

We never did that.

I can tell you, the feeling I have right now of eliminating that big credit card balance is amazing!

I wish I had paid off the smaller balance accounts first, no matter what the rate was.

My wife and I weren’t on the same page with our finances

My wife and I certainly didn’t like that we were in debt. No real difference of opinion there.

However, having a large amount of debt really, really bothered me.

Sometimes I worked myself up into a panic, thinking of an ever-growing mountain of debt.

• I would question why it never seemed to go away and what was wrong with me that I continued to live beyond my means?
• What would happen if I lost my job and we couldn’t pay for the mortgage, make payments on our debt, buy groceries…wouldn’t our debt then climb even higher?

The debt didn’t concern my wife as much. Maybe because she’s an accountant, and looked at the bigger picture…our overall “balance sheet”. Looking at it that way, we had a house with a solid amount of equity (it was worth more than the mortgage), we had retirement savings in 401k and IRA’s. We had been saving a ton into our children’s 529 college savings plans.

Overall, I guess our balance sheet looked ok.

However, we had no cash savings. None. And we had these credit balances that just never seemed to go away.

I was frustrated. Sometimes it would boil over and we would argue about how serious (or not) the debt balance was.

I wanted to come up with a determined effort to find a way, limit our spending so we could have enough extra to put against the debt…to pay it off.

For my wife, it wasn’t as much of a priority. I’m not saying she is wrong and I am right. We just weren’t on the same page as it relates to our debt and overall finances. The debt wasn’t keeping her up at night (yes, there were nights when I couldn’t get to sleep, my head was filled with angst over where our finances were heading).

I think that because we weren’t on the same page related to our debt, we never got serious about paying it off. That’s understandable. It’s nobody’s fault.

But that was the situation…remember also, I put my head in the sand at various points…that’s my fault.

When you stick your head in the sand the way I did – it made it easier that when something came up…lets say we needed a new washing machine – back to the credit card we went. And once again, our plan to pay off the debt was forgotten yet again.

How did we pay off the debt?

You think that what I’m about to share is taking a dark turn…

My wife and I are in the process of getting divorced.

Yep.

Not ideal for sure, but long story short, we have become different people, with different interests and priorities. How we view money and debt is just one of those differences.

Aside from all of the emotions (even though everything is quite amicable), splitting up assets isn’t easy. Each of us was going to have to take on half of the debt that we had accumulated.

We came to an agreement (finally), to use that annual bonus that I was set to receive to pay off that large credit card balance.

We are both going to have higher expenses since there are now two households. Having those debt payments would just add to the burden.

I know many of you might not have a bonus with your current role…You might be thinking… “I wish I had a bonus to pay off my debt in one fell swoop.” This is certainly true.

However, I certainly could have paid this card down on a monthly basis over a period of time. Remember, I had made the commitment to dollar-cost-average $240 every two weeks (every paycheck) to invest and save. I had considered splitting that equally between investments and paying down the credit card debt, but opted to build up my savings/investments and then wait for the bonus to come through to pay off the credit card.

This balance could have also been chipped away, just as I built up my savings and investment accounts.

Since my wife and I knew that we were going towards a separation, we both were in agreement to get rid of that balance and would use that bonus to pay off the credit card.

The Key “Secret” I Discovered

Throughout my recent journey to improve my finances over the past 3 years, I have learned that there is a secret to all of this…

Take action and make a commitment!

A real commitment.

I have found that making a commitment and taking action is actually the hardest part. Before, I never made a firm commitment. Actually, my wife and I never made a firm commitment.

Once that commitment was made, it was just a matter of deciding how to get it done and then putting the process in place. There was no debating at that point onward. This was going to happen and that was that.

I used the same process for saving/investing the $240 every two weeks. Yes, it put a strain on our cash flow and finances, but that money was coming out of my paycheck every two weeks and that was that.

It was decided.

We were going to use that bonus towards eliminating that credit card balance. No temptation to buy some luxury item that we “wanted” but didn’t “need” was going to happen this time. That was in the past. That is why this credit card balance stayed so high for so long.

I’ve still got more debt to eliminate, but this was a big one. It feels good. The momentum I feel is infectious. I am committed to eliminating all of my debt.

You can do this too…decide what you want to do and make that commitment and then….

TAKE ACTION!