I can pinpoint where it all went awry. We had meticulously saved all of intern year for our big move across the country. We lived within our means, out of little envelopes of cash. We had only student loan debt. Credit cards were debt free and only used for online purchases and paid right back.
We decided to buy a house at our residency location to build equity and so forth. We knew we'd be there 4 years. We paid cash for our down payment and the move. Our savings was gone, but it didn't matter because we would have 4 calm years in a low cost of living area to rebuild.
This was a great plan until hubby's first day of work. He instantly learned that his "match" was not a "fit." He was soon offered a position in another specialty somewhere else. It was what he wanted to do. We had no funds left and took a leap of faith and used the credit card to pay for the move.
In our new, high cost of living location did not give us any wiggle room in the budget. The credit card balance kept getting higher as I had to charge things like groceries in order to have the cash for the minimum payment that had gotten enormous. This sort of thing cannot not go on forever, but we felt absolutely trapped.
Fortunately, family came to our rescue and partially bailed us out. What has been very hard is to break the cycle. Cut our expenses to the point where the cash we pay toward our credit card balance comes from extra money, not grocery or rent money.
The whole thing has made me a very unhappy person over the last few years. I hate to be so unhappy when I have so many blessings I should be happy about.
As you could tell I'm sure from my last blog entry, something had to give. Since then we have attained our first financial goal in our "get out of debt" plan. I feel ecstatic! I am happy that we have a plan and that it has actually been working too!!!! We have made leaps and bounds in the last few months to combat our personal debt situation.
Before, when we were in such great financial shape, we had followed the advise given by Dave Ramsey. I have compiled all my notes from his advise and will be putting them on my personal blog to share with anyone interested.
We have a goal of being credit card debt free by end April! Just in time to save for our move for fellowship.
Med school and residency can definitely be super stressful financially. I think you guys have great goals though and though it's been less than ideal lately you should still be proud of yourselves for trying to stick to your principles. I hope you post again when you've reached your goals. Good luck! :-)
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