@hopelesslyarminian No more Gifts. Be honest and tell everyone that you have credit card debt and can no longer exchange any gifts for the next couple years.
Do the Snowball Debt Repayment Plan. Take every bit of money you can and pay off your debt.
Get a free budget done at the Non-profit relief society at a base.
Carpool.
Un-save your credit card info on your devices.
Clean up your social media and Undollow anything that encourages you to spend. Follow $ gurus encouraging you to Save.
Use the Amenities you pay for where you live so you don't have to pay for entertainment.
I also hope your budget is accurate.
Budgeting advice
One big thing that helped me is to make a REALISTIC budget. You don’t make up numbers that you think you “should” spend.
You PRINT OUT the numbers that you already DO spend. You print out (or write down) in categories EVERY outgoing expense from your bank account and credit cards for the last 3 months.
You refrain from making excuses like- oh that’s because my car broke, or I had to buy a gift, etc.
Just categorize it!
Then you (if you’re married, you both do this together at your regular family finance meeting) feel sad at looking at your real actual spending for a few minutes. Then you say, it’s going to get better because I’m going to fix it!
You pick ONE category to reduce spending by an amount that you are very confident you can achieve and do not worry about reducing the other categories.
You check your progress regularly and IF you have met your goal for that first reduction, you celebrate in a small but fun way, and then you choose another category to reduce, while maintaining the reduction from the first category.
