Use Your Tax Refund to Pay Down Debt. I Didn't.

If you haven't spent your tax refund and economic stimulus check yet, good for you! Now spend every cent of it on paying down your debt. Do it now. I'll wait.

I should have used the refund and stimulus checks to pay off more of my own pesky credit card debt. I'd intended to do the next best thing: contributing to the value of my home by upgrading the floors. That's sort of like paying down debt in an indirect way, right?

But, what actually happened was this: I thought about what sort of new floors to buy for too long, fearing the commitment of brand new laminates or hardwoods in my living room. Once it's down, it doesn't come up easily. I mean, do you realize how many options for flooring there are out there? Obviously, I couldn't just pick the best of the best, because, after all, I'm on a strict budget. And, I was going to do the installation myself. So, I needed to make the right choice the first time, make the best decision while spending as little money as possible. You understand, don't you? The trouble was that I continued to spend little bits of my extra money on little things here and there while doing my research on floors. So, when I was finally ready to almost decide on the material, I didn't have enough tax refund and stimulus check left over.

Smart, right? I'm a real genius. If I'd just done what I should have done in the first place, I'd have a nice chunk of credit card debt paid off and the freedom to think more about flooring without the pressure of having to buy it right now.

No matter how old and smart you think you are, some lessons are still learned the hard way, I suppose. This is particularly true in the case of consumer debt, that phenomenal blight on common sense.

In Debt,
Ed Ness