Too much of anything can be a bad thing. There came a time during our debt free journey where we hit the wall of budget fatigue. We knew budgeting was getting us to our goal but still we still wanted to spend money on thin gs we wanted to spend it on. Just because. We saw how much was coming in and how much we were throwing at our debt and thought what if we spent some of it on something we wanted.
We thought if we could just take it and spend it on things we wanted and felt we needed but didn’t really. We had wants we tried to masquerade as needs. It wasn’t a struggle to pay things off anymore because we saw the finish line approaching and our debt diminishing. But the fatigue hit. We were tired of budgeting, tired of paying things off. I, Mrs. HutchLife had gone hardcore and we didn’t do big celebrations when we hit milestones. Looking back, if we had to do it over, I would take time to celebrate more.
Because I’m a natural spender, to satisfy my fatigue, I started going to the mall and trying on clothes in stores that I liked. Just to see what they’d look like on me when we were debt free. During the debt free journey I not only didn’t buy any clothes but I also lost 50 lbs. Picture me 50 lbs lighter wearing the same clothes.
Walking around the mall didn’t tempt me to buy clothes. It made me feel good to know that soon I’d be able to buy what I need and not worry about paying a store card after because it would be paid for with cash we had. I didn’t have a lot of clothes at the time and I gave away most of my older, bigger clothes when we became debt free.
Budget fatigue though tiring for a while got better as we talked about our why. Remember your why. It’ll carry you through. It carried us through and we made it to November 30, 2017 when we became debt free.
Have you hit a wall with paying off your debt? What have you done to overcome budget fatigue? What would you recommend to others?
