Remember our mystery quote: "I am happy as long as I am healthy, and I am rich as long as I am not in debt." In part one I talked a little bit about health. Here in part two I plan to try and give some specific help with finances.
I might have mentioned it in the past but I used to "write" a self help blog called the Slackers Guide to Life. I still own the domain it just redirects here. I put write in quotes because I almost never actually wrote anything on it. I divided the effort into a few categories. One of the only categories at which I had any success was money. So let me share some of my limited wisdom.
So you are drowning in credit card debt and only making minimum payments. You make good money but never seem to have enough. The first thing you have to figure out is where all your money is going. I I don't recommend jumping instantly into trying to budget and save money. Take one month to determine how you are sabotaging you finances. You need to record every purchase of any kind you make. There are apps to help with this. I currently use mint to track my budget and all my spending. But when I started I actually found it better to do so with just a notebook. I recorded the date, the amount, and what I purchased. Once the month finished I went back to the list. You can break the expenditures into as many categories as you want. I went with a simple systems. I grabbed a red highlighter and marked outlays that weren't good for me or were unnecessary as bad. The rest were acceptable.
When I finished I totaled everything up. I was shocked to find that my bad outlays were almost twice as much as the good. Be cutting out some of the bad things I could literally save hundreds a month. So I recommend trying this for one month to start.
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