Oh, hai

So, this is me, right: I'm 26, I work in marketing, and I have a $12 231 debt. It's not doing very much at present, just hanging out, has been for several months now. Lots of people my age have one: they went on holiday, bought a car, needed bond money, were a little less than responsible with the old credit card. So I haven't been too worried about it. But recently, it's really starting to annoy me. So I thought, enough is enough. I thought, time to get angry. I thought, time to smash that bitch.

There are a few things standing between me and debt-free happiness. Obstacle Number One is my highly destructive online shopping addiction. Obstacle Number Two is my salary, which really isn't as high as I'd like it to be, especially taking into consideration Obstacle Number One. Obstacle Number Three is my own pigheaded unwillingness to accept that I have a debt, which I think is what got me into this mess in the first place.

You see, three and a half years ago, I was twenty-three, a Masters student, and remarkably debt-free. (Apart from the minor issue of the old HECS, which I was happily ignoring, and will continue to ignore for the foreseeable future). And I met this awesome dude, Strummer. He's the man of my cheese dreams (I do love cheese) and I uprooted myself from Sydney and trekked down the coast to be with him. We set ourselves up in a lovely little flat with just enough room for all my books and not quite enough room for all his motorcycle jackets. But there was one hitch on the road to domestic bliss: Strummer had a $22K personal loan debt. This was somehow amassed through an overseas trip, a high maintenance girlfriend, and buying a guitar (I'm a little hazy on the details). I was pretty surprised by this but I kind of left him to it, aside from the occasional nagging about how he should really get it under control. And so we existed, sailing through life, with our finances all separate and independent-like.

The thing is, it's getting harder and harder to ignore. And it stops us from doing what we want to do. Not just him, but me too. It stops me from moving overseas, because I'm unwilling to go without him, and he can't leave until it's paid off. It stops me from saving for our own place, because it seems ridiculous to be putting positive money away when there's negative money to be paid. And as much as my mother always warned me about sexually transmitted debt, I want to help him. I earn more than he does and he simply can't afford to put chunks money aside at the moment. We're a team, and it's time I started acting like that.

And it's not to say that he hasn't made a dent in it - in the time we've been together, he's single-handedly brought it down from $22K to the much more respectable $12 231 that it currently stands at. But the weekly repayments are barely skimming the interest and it's gonna take more than the odd $100 to smash it up. This capitalist problem calls for a punkrock solution, and Strummer is into Jeff Buckley. I'm just saying, he can't do it alone. So I decided to step in. We're gonna smash this bitch together. Ain't love grand?