I am crossing my fingers and holding my breath that the business is up off the matt and can start doing well again. Wow, did it crater my finances, though. I have balances on waayyyy too many credit cards. Worse yet, I've got both business and personal credit cards, and most of them are pretty close to maxed out.
Fortunately, if the business continues to do well, I should be able to climb out a lot faster than I would have if I had a job. I retired over $10,000 worth of credit card debt, alone, just in May so far. That's good news. The bad news is, that really didn't make that much of a dent.
I might be able to retire a comparable chunk of credit card debt in June as well. Beyond that, there's just no telling in this business. July could be great, or it could be awful. I've seen it go both ways.
I'm also making progress on my mountain of fixed-term debt as well. In August, I pay off an equipment note that will free up another $300 a month. After that, though, not much happens until 2013. That year, I'll pay off three more notes, which will free up almost $2,000. Then, in 2014, I'll pay off 3 other notes and free up another $1,500.
The name of the game is survival. If I can just survive that long, I'll have almost $4,000 less debt to service, every single month, just in my fixed-term loans, alone.
Really, that's like $48,000 a year in income. That's almost a job right there.
The key is just surviving. Making payments. Day to day and month-to-month. It'll happen eventually. We have enough equipment that we shouldn't need to take out a note for anything for the foreseeable future. We have what we need and we're in a "make do" mode until we get prosperous again.
In the mean time, using all this money just to pay off debt sorta sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as accumulating debt, and it doesn't suck as much as not-being able to make progress. It took me two years to get to this point. It's feasible that with two good years, I could be pretty much all the way back out again.
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