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Four and half years ago, I was $33,000 in debt.
Worse, I had nothing to show for that money spent. I don't own a home or a car. It hadn't gone toward an Ivy League education.
No, I acquired the debt over twenty years of living carelessly -- not extravagantly, but inattentively -- in New York City, a very expensive town. I had several credit cards, and I used them blithely to buy the small things that make me happy -- a CD here, a sushi dinner there, the occasional evening spent in the swaying embrace of a taxi dancer (sigh... if only).
I don't have expensive tastes, and I rarely indulged in anything very pricey. But by rotating between my several cards and making only minimum monthly payments, I slowly but surely erected what I think you will certainly agree was an impressive if teetering tower of debt.
In my defense, let me assure you that I always paid my bills on time. It's not as though I was receiving threatening calls from bill collectors. It's just that I limited myself to minimum payments and -- here's the embarrassing part -- I rarely, if ever, looked at the bills I was paying. So while I knew I'd dug a nice hole for myself, I had no real idea just how deep it was.
Finally, one day about five years ago, I awoke as if from a fever dream and decided to confront my situation. I gathered together my various and sundry credit card bills, cranked up my coal-powered calculator, and did the arithmetic.
The sum total was more than twice what I somehow expected it to be, and I immediately knew that serious action must be undertaken. I considered bankruptcy, but somehow couldn't bring myself to go that route (mind you, I don't intend that as a judgment of anyone who does travel down that road). So mortified was I at having let my situation get out of hand to that degree that I felt, somehow, that I deserved to suffer punishment. I just couldn't let myself off the hook that easily (again, I speak here only of my own particular circumstances), and that wasn't even taking into account the impact a bankruptcy filing would have on my credit rating and future financial status.
Instead, I responded to a mailed offer of a debt consolidation loan through a bank. The interest was under ten percent, and I felt that this would be a better move than one of those debt consolidation services for a couple of reasons: first, because some of the money was owed to my father, and the debt consolidation services couldn't add him to my list of debtors -- only commercial creditors are involved in the services these organizations offer -- and second, I didn't want it on my credit report that I'd had to resort to debt consolidation assistance.
A bank loan would actually help my credit rating, if I paid it off in time (as I certainly intended to do), so that was the approach I chose.
Over those five years, I've been working two and sometimes three jobs, toiling seven days a week for most of the year. And my efforts have slowly but surely paid off. I used the money from the bank loan to pay off all my cards but my American Express (which I have to pay off each month) and I closed each account, one by one. Then, as soon as I was able, I sent my father the money I owed him (the truth is, I could never repay my father all I owe him, but in terms of the money he loaned me when I was out of work a few years back, we're now square).
I also paid off a substantial sum that I owed my dentist, made a sizable charitable contribution that was promised in my book back in 2000 (I promised a donation to breast cancer research for each book sold, and that donation has now been processed), and finally, just now, I went online to make the payments that will bring the balances of both my Amex Gold card and my Amex Blue card down to zero.
I am, as of this moment, 100% debt-free.
And I'm feeling pretty darned good about it, I don't mind telling you.
In my little world, British actress Sonya Walger is virtually ubiquitous. She turns up in an astonishingly high percentage of the television programs I've watched in recent years, among them Tell Me You Love Me, Lost, Sleeper Cell, and The Mind of the Married Man.
She's obviously an attractive woman, but I've always found her appearance oddly unsettling, too, in a way I couldn't define.
Until now, that is. I've finally solved the mystery: Walger looks like a young-ish John Travolta in drag. But don't take my word for it; see for yourself:
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