This isn’t a post about home repair. I’m just going to say that up front. But I’ve been wanting to write this for a while and it’s my blog, so here we are.
About 18 months ago I was carrying just over $11,000 across three credit cards. Capital One, Chase, and a store card from a home improvement chain I will not name. The interest rates ranged from 22% to a genuinely criminal 29.99%. I was making minimum payments and basically treading water. Every month the balances barely moved.
The Moment I Got Serious
I’m not going to pretend there was some dramatic rock-bottom moment. I just got really, really annoyed one day looking at my statement. I had paid $180 that month and my balance had gone down by $40. Forty dollars. I did the math on how long it would take to pay off at that rate and I think I actually said a bad word out loud in my kitchen.
What I Actually Did
I used the avalanche method — paying off the highest interest card first while making minimums on the others. I know some people swear by the snowball method for the psychological wins, and I get it, but the math on avalanche is just better and I’m a math person. I also picked up some freelance work on weekends and threw every dollar of that straight at the debt. No exceptions, no rationalizing.
It took 14 months. Not 18, not 3 years — 14 months of being pretty strict about it. We still ate out occasionally. We didn’t go full monk mode. But we stopped buying stuff we didn’t need.
What I’d Do Differently
Honestly? I would have called the credit card companies earlier and asked for a rate reduction. I did it eventually and got Chase to drop from 24% to 18%. They just… did it when I asked nicely. Nobody tells you that’s an option. I also would have opened a high-yield savings account sooner — we had almost no emergency fund going into this, which is terrifying in hindsight.
Where We Are Now
Zero balance on all three. I closed the store card, kept the other two. Credit score went up about 60 points. The feeling of not having that hanging over me is genuinely hard to describe. It’s not exciting like buying something is exciting. It’s quieter than that. But it’s better.
If you’re in the same situation, the only thing I’ll say is: the math is not as impossible as it feels when you’re in the middle of it. Run the actual numbers. Make a plan. It’s doable.