Get out of debt to afford transition.

Hello, I'm Nyx/Nyxie, 33, They/Them and I'm just now realizing who I am.

The short version is this:

I grew up in a bad environment. I had to be a person I hated just to survive. Depression, ADHD and the like meant I tried to fill the holes in my heart with credit cards back when. Throwing away any income just to feel something other than self loathing.

8 years ago I met my partner and moved to KC, I was finally free and somewhat happy, but the debt followed me, and old habits came back.

Fast forward to 2019, I got hoodwinked into a scam of a IT school for a career at the promise of more money (because that'll solve things, right?) that turned out to be a failure. I hated it, I couldn't actually help anyone like I wanted to and I was left with a worthless certificate. I also graduated in March 2020, so I had to spend a year paying rent with recently refinanced credit cards during lockdown...

Lockdown gave me time to Think About Things(TM), like it probably did for a lot of people, and even though my egg "cracked" then, the type of work and field I was in meant I couldn't really be who I wanted to be...so I stayed the same, getting more depressed as time went on. You see where this goes...

Now, it's 2024, I've finally gotten (back) to both an environment and career I am genuinely happy with and where I can accept my real self, in that regard I'm finally happy...

But the debt is killing me. Like, actually killing me. I don't sleep at night.

One of my two checks goes straight to Sally Mae for a career I'm not even pursuing, the other goes to more credit cards from either past mistakes or trying to live.

I'm worried that even though I've finally shed the person I was just to survive, and I finally feel like my real self, it'll be just in time for me to suffocate from my past mistakes.

$20k would kill the student loan, $50k is the whole total, but even just 1, 5 or 10k would be life changing. I am updating this as I take care of debt and if you see local offline anonymous donations, its me working overtime or selling things to tackle them.

Goals:

I am updating the goals to be more realistic and slowly take care of some debts, I will update the goals if they reach past anything at all. Cards are being closed once they're zeroed. I don't want to have credit cards in my life anymore. Each line represents a bill/debt that is eating my finances. Trying for a "snowball" approach, smallest to largest. As much as the student loans are whats killing me, just getting some of the smaller stuff taken care of would free up money for me to put towards more than minimum payments.

Things that have been paid off with either GFM Donations or myself doing overtime/selling things:

$1k worth of affirm loans: Paid

$300 on a credit card: Paid

$270 on a phone payoff plan: Paid

$145 on a credit card: Paid

$800 in vet bills: Paid

Things I'm still working on:

$1000 on a credit card

$1000 on another credit card

The Big Stuff I can't tackle yet:

$3k on a credit card

$3k on a another credit card.

$10k on a credit card.

$14k on a credit card.

And $18k in student debt.

If you can help, feel free and I thank you.

If not, it's okay. I know we are all suffering in this terrible world our fathers and their fathers before have made for us.

Some worse than me, help them first.

Thank you for reading.

-Nyx