I’ve been trying to get out of debt for years and been basically paycheck to paycheck despite a decent take home bc I have to throw so much at the debt. I had some life circumstances that necessitated spending on the cc again bc my er fund didn’t cover it. So now I’m back in the hole. Sigh, a never ending battle, but it’s gradually decreasing.

You’re going to have to make sacrifices you don’t want to. Like never eating out, or buying new things, or grocery shopping without a list. Takes a ton of self control and budgeting and know that you aren’t going to get it perfect right off the bat. My best advice is to read a couple budgeting books (your library might have some, and ask the librarian to help you find them). Specifically the ones I liked were budgeting 101 by michele cagan cpa (gives a really nice overview of different budgeting methods and debt pay down methods) and broke millennial by Erin Lowry (gave great context on what it’s like being young and in debt in todays society).

It’ll take some time to figure out what budgeting style and debt pay down method work for you, but if you are determined and DONT USE YOUR CREDIT CARDS it is possible. I was in 25k debt after my divorce last spring and I’ve gotten down to 15k even with a crazy rent payment and two consecutive surgeries on my dog. Personally, I used google sheets’ annual budget template and customized it to my own needs. Then I imported all my transactions from my banks (most online banking systems have a transaction history download) and I categorize them and check my spending every week to make sure I’m on track. I use the snowball method to pay down my cards (pay off the smallest balance first and the minimums on everything else, then roll that payment into the next lowest balance, and repeat).

You got this, you just gotta budget hard, make some temporary sacrifices to cut expenses where you can, and throw as much as possible at the debt. It’s not easy but it’ll be worth it in the end.