New Location!

Hey folks! I'm still blogging, but I've gone ahead and moved my blog over to gregoutofdebt.com! There's a new post up there, you should go check it out!

Nitty Gritty Update: Stacking Cash and my April Budget

I've been stacking cash like a drug dealer. Brace yourselves for dry details.

Not bad for three days of hustling.

As you can see, project Liquidate-My-Lifestyle is well under way. Last week I sold my iPad3, my handgun, and my Monster saks. The Bulova watch is spoken for and I should have cash in hand for it by Friday.

That'll bring me to a total of $1,430 in cash, enough to fund my $1,000 emergency cash reserves. That way, if a small disaster strikes, I'll be able to cover it without using my credit cards. Score.

Next step is amassing enough cash to pay for the next three semesters of tuition and school books without taking out any additional student loans. I've calculated that total to be about $6,600. $1,900 of which will be needed in May.

Yikes.

That's a lot of money. I'll have $1,163 budgeted for it once I clear the payment for the Bulova.

Hoping to take some of the cash from my car sale (when it happens) and apply it towards tuition. Also, at that point, the $305.48 that would have gone to my car payment each month will start getting applied to my tuition savings as well.

Once tuition is taken care of, I can finally start hitting hard on my credit card debt.

No bites on the car yet. Dropping the price to $24,950 - low as I can go, about $700 below KBB value for a private party sale, but still more than I would get for trading it in. I need to get rid of that stupid car payment ASAP. It's listed on Autotrader and KSL.

The further I get along in this, the more I realize I'm probably going to need to kick my income into higher gear. Probably by doing freelance work on the side or picking up a call center sales gig for a few hours on the weekends.

Be Careful What You Wish For

"When I need to relax, I mostly just like to go shopping at high-end boutiques and watch Gossip Girl."

At least she's honest about how empty her life is.

It had been over four years since I was spurned by Jennifer*. A lot had changed since then. I no longer had difficulty attracting shallow girls. Hurray.

And yet I felt more alone than ever.

Curled up next to me on the floor was Natalie*, without a doubt the most gorgeous woman I've ever held a conversation with.

I use the phrase "held a conversation" loosely, since it implies that I was an active participant, when in reality it was mostly her talking. About herself.

She was in her twenties, but seemed to have the maturity of a 16 year-old. It seems that materialism often does that to a person, myself included.

I can't believe I was actually attracted to you.

The biggest problem with spending so much time, money, and effort to attract the kind of superficial and materialistic women that so many men fantasize about is that when you finally have those kinds of women available to you, they're often so self-centered and immature that you can't relate to them at all.

Unless you legitimately enjoy Gossip Girl, in which case
you probably aren't interested in women to begin with.

Some of you might say "Hey, that's not so bad! You don't need to be able to relate to them in order to have a meaningless physical relationship!"

Thanks Satan, but mama didn't raise no date rapist.

One of the best things about being honest with myself about my debt has been the relief that I feel from no longer trying to be something, or someone, that I'm not. I don't feel a need to impress people. I feel like I'm coming back down to earth.

*Names changed to protect the shallow

Budgets, Vice and Sacrifice: Putting My Addiction to Rest

"Greg, you've been in bed for over 24 hours now... you okay man?"

I need help, but I can't let anyone see how bad it's gotten. Never let them see you bleed.

"I'm fine."

Now please get out of here before I start vomiting again.

It was 2009. I had wrecked my car the night before. The girl I was interested in stopped talking to me after I wrote six essays for her. In an effort to get past the pain, that night I had chugged 11 Red Bulls while hopped up on prescription amphetamines. 

Bad idea.

I had no idea what time it was. My sheets were damp with sweat. I felt like I hadn't slept in days.

I could feel my heart beating irregularly. I could feel it in my head. Weird.

I'm having heart palpitations... am I going to die?

I looked over at the shelf next to me: a half dozen empty bottles of Ambien, my handgun, and my temple recommend. It had expired months ago. I started panicking.

Not like this. It can't end like this. Heavenly Father, please don't let it end like this.

Then I started puking again.

Quick Nitty Gritty: Everything Must Go

I've decided this blog will feature two types of posts: big picture posts and quick nitty gritty posts.

Big Picture Posts are similar to the first ones I posted, a 10,000 foot view of the battle against materialism, debt, and pride.

Quick Nitty Gritty is just that--very brief weekly updates on what I'm doing in the here and now to get out of debt. These are not polished, revised, or anything. They are more notes than anything else!

Quick Nitty Gritty: Everything Must Go!

• Canceled my spotify premium account (saves me $10 per month)

• By buying groceries at Costco instead of eating out every meal and cutting energy drinks from my diet, I've only spent ~$240 or so on food this month (down from the $600 I spent in December) and I still have a ton of food left.

• Canceled my iPad's cellular plan (saves me $30 per month)

• Liquidating a lot of my stuff in order to beef up my cash reserves ASAP. I hate to see it go, but I'm not messing around any more.
• Sold two monsters sacks for $300 altogether
• I have some interest in my Kimber 1911 for $600
• I have two inquiries on my iPad3 for $320 - if they don't fan out, I'll put it on eBay and eat the fees (9% final value plus whatever they charge for insertion)
• Once my car is sold, I'll try and sell my parking spot, I should be able to get a couple hundred for it.
• Listing a bunch of video games on eBay for some extra chump change and to boost my seller rating so I can make more on future liquidation efforts (like the iPad, if it comes to that)
• Thinking about selling my Bulova, I heard that luxury watches lose a ton of value off retail, so I'm not sure if it will be worth it. Will need to investigate further.

• Prepping to sell my car, which will save me $305/mnth on the car payment, ~$200 a month on maintenance, and knock my gas bill down by ~40% since my replacement vehicle will have roughly double the MPG and won't need premium fuel. Waiting for the title to get transferred to the Provo Branch of America First before listing in order to streamline the transaction (see below)

• Have been approached by a couple people who are willing to pay me a little extra money to do some work for them. Will keep deets on the DL out of respect for the privacy of the people/companies involved (but thank you guys, I really appreciate it).

• Experimenting with different budgeting software. I hate mint's budgeting system for 9 million reasons, doing a trial of YNAB, I like it so far.

• Established a basic strategy for my approach to getting out of debt, pretty much ripped it from Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover
• Stop using credit cards, pay for everything with cash
• Budget like a madman, eliminate unnecessary expenses to free up as much of my income as possible - it's the biggest tool I have for paying down debt.
• Look for options to increase my income
• Build an "emergency fund" of $1,000 cash - for unexpected expenses.
• Pay off credit cards using the debt snowball approach of focusing on the smallest balance first, make minimum payments on the others until the smallest one is paid off, then focus on the next smallest one
• For me, this means knocking out my Citi VISA balance ($2,045.64) first, then my AMEX balance ($8,950.68). I want to get this done by the time I graduate next spring but I really don't know if it's possible! I need to crunch the numbers.
• Pay off student loans using the debt snowball approach.

• Just about ready to list my car for sale. KBB and Nada put it at being worth between 25 and 27 grand. I'll be listing it for 27, I'll offer the snow tires for an extra 500 if they want. My payoff amount is $17,460.55, a thousand less than I thought it would be. Score! Hoping to walk away with at least $7,500 in cash.
• On Monday I had the summer tires put back on -- the massive improvement on grip and performance will make a big difference on the test drive. The kind of guys looking at my car will be looking for these sorts of things
• Today I got it washed so it looks good. Decided to forego doing a full detail job because honestly I don't have the cash to burn and the hassle of coordinating rides while it's in the shop is a pain.
• Today I called America First Credit Union where I have my loan to get the payoff total and procedure for getting the title. Turns out the title is in Ogden, it'll be in their Provo branch by friday. When someone is ready to buy, I just take their cash into the branch office and they'll pay off the loan, release the lien on the title, and get me the remainder as a cashier's check
• Need to figure out how I'm going to get around once I do sell it - will need to bum rides off roommates or borrow someone's car or rent (yikes) until I can purchase a replacement vehicle.
• Decided my replacement car will depend on how much I clear on the transaction. I'm leaning towards an older Mazda3. 
• Depending on what my cash situation is at that point, I might go with a higher mileage vehicle so I can carry some of the cash into my tuition and emergency funds, taking into account that doing so will carry a higher risk of maintenance issues. Will worry more about this once I sell the car.

• Paying for tuition in cash is going to be a bear! I have 3 semesters left, tuition will be around $1,600 per semester (I'm going part time) plus books, I'm budgeting $250 or so for those, so $1,850 per semester. I have to constantly be putting cash towards tuition each month to keep up with this rate, something like $475/mnth or so? That's going to seriously hinder my ability to pay down my debts for a while, but the only alternative is even more debt - no thanks.

• Switched as many of my online recurring subscriptions as I could think of from my credit cards to my debit card.
• Will keep an eye on my credit card statements for any I missed and switch them to the debit card as they arise.

• Turns out there's a ton of people reading this blog from my workplace, school, and social circles. I didn't expect such a strong reaction. Really appreciate the support.

Lamborghinis, Jeans, and Pageant Queens - How I wasted 42 grand pursuing the wrong women

"So how much do you make?"

That's what she asked me. Yeah, I should have seen that red flag from a mile away. This was four years ago, though, and I was pretty bad at recognizing horrible people back then.

Jennifer* and I had spent quite a bit of time together over the past couple weeks. She was a certifiably gorgeous pageant queen; intelligent, charming, far and away the most beautiful woman to have ever expressed interest in me. She took me out to a steakhouse. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world to have a girl like her interested in me. Naturally, my ego was in the stratosphere.

Granted, I was a little bit worried because she could look at someone and tell you exactly how much they spent on jeans and the rest of their outfit, but hey, I could look at someone and tell you exactly how much they spent on A/V cables for their TV, so I figured we were two peas in a pod.

For the record, this was back before I had any significant debt. I drove a 1994 Buick Lesabre and shopped at Ross. Like a boss.

Me, back then. So boss.

I told her I made about $20,000 a year from a part-time job, but when I graduated, I hoped to make $30,000 or even $40,000 if I worked hard!

She wasn't too impressed with my response.

In fact, after that date (our second or third), she pretty much ignored me. Can you believe that? The incredibly shallow girl wound up behaving in an incredibly shallow fashion! Inconceivable.

So what did I do?

Well, I wasn't about to allow some little thing like being financially responsible separate me from the woman of my dreams!

I sold my old Buick, and bought a $14,000 Acura RSX. I drained my savings and took out a loan for $11,000 to finance it. 

How could any woman resist a guy on this hot set of wheels, right?

I knew she had a thing for nice clothes, too, and my $15 jeans from Ross weren't cutting it. I traded up to $300 Rock & Republics and some other denim from the Buckle, where she worked.

How could any woman not be impressed by these incredibly tasteful jeans?

I was sure she would be impressed the next time she saw me.

Man, was I in for a shock.

You see, because the next time I saw her, Jennifer waved at me as she was getting into her new boyfriend's car, a Lamborghini Murcielago worth more than $300,000. 

This is a Lamborghini Murcielago. This is the car I did not have.

He was wearing tailored clothes and was taking her to the house he had just bought. Now you know why I hate summer salesmen.

I punched a hole in the wall. Later I covered it with a picture of Jesus.

Thanks to this picture of Jesus, no one ever saw the hole in the wall.

But I noticed something. People, especially women, seemed to pay a lot more attention to me with my fancy clothes. 

Wow Greg, nice jeans!

Greg, nice car!

Okay, I thought, I may not make a lot of money, but if I have expensive things, people will treat me like I do make a lot of money. So... I put two and two together and came up with a terrible idea!

I became addicted to buying expensive clothing (especially from the Buckle), and relied on them to feel a sense of self-worth and importance. Whenever I got rejected by a girl, I found myself going shopping therapeutically and spending $500 at a time on new clothes. Lacking any real sense of self-worth, I relied on the compliments to keep me going. 

According to Mint, I've spent about $12,000 on clothing and apparel over the past couple years. That's some expensive therapy.

Mysteriously, I was still unhappy. People aren't really drawn to the unhappy, so the cycle kept repeating itself. In fact, one time I met another girl who I really liked (this happens a lot). When she shot me down, I determined it was probably because my car wasn't ridiculous enough. I traded up again. This time it was $30,000. 

To be fair, although this car was a horrible decision, I still love it.
Like a battered wife loves her drunken husband.

Surely she wouldn't be able to resist me if I had a better car! After all, that totally worked so well for me last time. 

Now she's married. To not me.

So... that's 42 grand that I wasted trying to impress the opposite sex, using material goods as a counterfeit for real confidence. Whenever I came close to maxing out my cards, I would just take out a fat student loan and use the excess to pay off Amex. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

I thought I was pretty smart since the interest rate on student loans is a lot lower than credit cards and there are all sorts of payment options on federally-insured student debt that aren't available for credit cards. Plus, I was building my credit score to the mid 700s so that I could borrow even more money. Not to mention my student loan balances were tucked away on some website I never visited, so I didn't have to stress out about them all the time! So smart.

In reality, the smart thing would have been to not spend the money in the first place.

A couple days ago I logged into that website I never visited to check and see how much my smart decisions were costing me in student loans.

It turns out I owe $51,000 in unsubsidized Stafford Loans, costing me over $4 in interest per day.

Wow.

That was like, twice as much as I thought I owed and probably three times as much as I actually needed to finance my tuition. I had $18,500 owed on the car and $11,500 owed on my credit cards. That's a lot of money.

So I've decided to start taking action and have some promising results to report after my first month. 

Next post will discuss sacrifice, hope, and the road ahead.

*Names changed to protect the shallow. The guy with the Lamborghini lost his job when his employer went bankrupt. Jennifer is still single today.

What this Blog is About

"Not everyone has as much money as you, Greg."

I was taken aback by the venom in her voice. There was real resentment there. It was a first date, and I was taking her up to the apartment to make ice cream sculptures after commenting that I didn't care for a particular vehicle in the parking garage.

Hers was the most recent amongst a long list of similar statements I'd heard. After all, I had become known for my flashy suits, extravagant watches, designer jeans, tailored shirts, expensive hobbies, exotic car, and other conspicuous displays of wealth.

To the untrained eye, I was a part-time college student with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cash and an equally inexhaustible ego. It was understandable that someone might resent me for that. I seemed to be just another rich douchebag.

Except I wasn't. I was broke, insecure, and yearning for the approval of friends and family.

Like Fitzgerald's Gatsby, I had compromised my principles and lost myself in trying to fit in with a crowd that wasn't mine. I had spent five years breaking the bank, taking out loans, and living beyond my means to project a false image that was increasingly unlikeable to an increasing number of people.

This entire exercise was costing me a fortune that I didn't have. I didn't even know how much I owed to anyone anymore.

I looked at my beautiful car while we waited for the elevator and began wondering what I was doing with my life.

When was the last time I even looked at my net worth? How long can I keep this up? I should have a raise coming, but what if it doesn't come? What if I lose my job? What if I meet the woman of my dreams? Will she still want me after she finds out I have no money?

Over the following weeks I kept thinking about this and realized I needed to get back in control of my life.

My name is Greg Vandagriff. I'm a 28 year-old college student working full-time and living in Provo, Utah. At the beginning of this month, I had over $80,000 in debt.

The purpose of this blog is to share my ongoing journey in getting out of debt and help motivate me in doing so by providing a degree of accountability. I intend to write at least one brief post a week until I'm debt-free. I anticipate that this process will take years.

It's going to be brutal but I'm committed.

Am I worried what others will think of me for revealing the extent of my financial failures? 

A little, but as you will soon see, striving for the approval of my peers is what got me into this hole to begin with. When people thought I had money, it didn't really make me any happier, so why bother pretending? I might as well make something good from this debacle.

The approval of others doesn't pay my bills.

It is my hope that this blog will help others escape the trap of embracing unchecked materialism and debt, especially those who think "the good life" is worth going into debt for (hint: it's not). 

My next post will discuss how and why I started living beyond my means. Like most good stories, it involves beautiful women, Lamborghinis, and punching holes in the wall.