Yeah so I screwed up

I got into some serious credit card debt over the last several years. I guess 9 years to be exact. It was sort of gradual. I would mainly use the cards when I came back from traveling and was broke or I was just broke for some reason and I needed (wanted) to make a big purchase.. Like so many others I always told myself I would just pay it back next month. I never did. Eventually the debt got sizable but I didn't really care so much. I couldn't be bothered with it, so I just kept making the minimum payments with the intention of working my debt back down in the "near future".. then I would get itchy feet and go traveling or something again and come home broke and repeat the cycle.

Now it's gotten to the point where it's unmanageable. For a long time it was not too bad. With the economy going to hell the credit card companies have found any excuse to raise their interest rates and now all my my debt has huge interest rates. I think the lowest is 18.99% apr. The highest is 29.99%. Sometimes rates went up for reasons I was guilty of, such as being a couple of days late on ONE payment. Other times it was for no reason at all. That 18.99% rate was $12.99% a month ago. I didn't directly do anything to get that one raised. I just got a notice in the mail saying it was happening. Great.

I was really tempted to just stop paying but I'm goign to take the responsible route and pay it all off. To do this I am liquidating my life. I'm selling a lot of things that mean a lot to me, 20+ years of punk/hardcore record collecting and related items, amongst other things. I'll be spending WAY less, and just minimizing my life. I am keeping the bike I talk about below since when I do get out of debt I'd like to live on that bike for a long while travelling around. Then probably sell that too and travel somewhere else. That's all just dreams at this point though. First order of business is to get out from under. I'll be having a nice yard sale soon it seems but in the mean time I'll be unloading stuff on ebay. My goal is 40 items a week. That should keep me busy for about a year. By the end of that I want to be debt free and with money in the bank.. we shall see....