I started my financial independence journey in 2016.  I was a single mom, working a fulltime job, making a good salary, and was still drowning in debt and spending like I made a million dollars a year.  Everything I wanted, I went and charged it.  I had a pension from my job I figured I would never have to save for retirement.  I was wrong in my thinking; I lived a mediocre life and not living life to my fullest.  I had to make a change.  Here I was in 2016.  I had 330,000 dollars in debt.  I was going to have to deal with college expenses in the next 2-3 years.  I was financially in a mess.  I decided to attend a conference on financial wellness which changed the course of my life. 

I attended a conference and couldn’t believe all the debt-free people I was meeting or on their own journey of becoming debt-free.  I knew at that moment I had to change.  I had to stop spending and start investing.  I had bought into the dream that one day I will pay it off.  I was living the American Dream, but it truly was a nightmare.  I had to make some very drastic changes.  I am very grateful for those individuals who shared their stories of having paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and then becoming debt-free.  I heard about their struggles and how they minimized their spending to achieve their goals of financial freedom.  I was hooked.  I knew my journey was not going to be easy, but I needed to start!  

I continued to analyze every aspect of my spending.  Yikes, it was worst than I thought.  My salary more than paid for my life, but I was out of control.  All I was doing was feeding my ego.  I am grateful to all the authors and bloggers who have changed my life and showed me a different way to live.  I talk to small business owners and employees every day who are doing the same thing.  Getting stuck in life.  Your life doesn’t have to be that way.  You can choose to change and make different decisions for your life.   

My first task was to get on a budget.  It was not easy, but I needed to account for every cent coming in and every cent that was going out.  It took three months of bank statements and highlighted my various expenses.  I had to do this.  It was hard to see how many times we ate out Fast Food and how much money I was wasting at these restaurants.  What was wrong with me?  What had I done?  I then realized I didn’t want to be like my parents.  I wanted to be different.  My parents worked all of their lives and had nothing to show for it.  They made the wrong decisions due to ignorance. I didn’t want to be like them.  I wanted to be different.   

Go through three months’ worth of bank statements and let me know what you find.  Ask yourself the same hard questions I had to ask myself.  Why was I overspending? Who was I trying to impress and why?  Who or what was I making rich? I had to confront my initial mindset change and make a shift in my mindset for the better.  Take the time to do what you need to do and work through the internal changes.  Until you take the time to find out where you are financially and what put you there you will never be able to move to where you want to be financial.