I have been reading stories about people working on
clearing their debt and one thing that always comes up is stop using money to
buy non-essentials. With most people, this is heading to a coffee joint instead
of making it at home or stopping by Chipotle for lunch but with me it is buying
cards. I haven’t spent a lot on cards this year but when you tally up the cards
I have purchased for a dollar here and a pack there it does add up.
My medical debt has
begun to creep up again because I have met a number of new doctors over the
past few months and they all want to run various tests that relate to their
specialty and tests like MRIs, X-rays and blood tests add up fast, my co-pay for an MRI I had two weeks ago was $175 and I have another MRI for my knees and hips that I will be doing in
December or January.
So as part of my So You Don't Have To experiments, for the month of October I will not purchase anything
outside of those things necessary; food, medical/medicine, gas, bills, etc. Not
a penny will go to my collection, which will be difficult because I enjoy
searching eBay and COMC daily. I will continue to sell cards on eBay but any
money from those sales will remain in Paypal
To determine how much I will save, each time I find a card that I would normally bid on I will move that much money over to my savings account. Since this year has been slow in purchases, I bought only 3 cards in September, I will determine the amount as if I really wanted to purchase the card and ignore my circumstance of paying off medical bills.
I am certain that by Halloween I will be jonesing for new cardboard.
