Looking at my networth on a regular basis now, I asked myself, where do I go from here now? To answer this I sat down with my finances and took a good hard look at things. I was in approximately Rs.21,000 of credit card debt, and a student loan of Rs. 250,000. Though my equity investments of about Rs. 40,000 give me mental support as I have no money in savings. To make the conditions worse, I have to marry in the next year (Indian marriages are way too expensive) and over that I want to buy a house within the next year, though my finances are screaming at me, “You need to pull a miracle out of nowhere to achieve all this”.
As if I could hear the screams, I made some major changes in my spending and saving habits. I have been following it for the past one month.

The first thing I did is I made a list of every single thing I had to pay out each month using Microsoft Excel. I made separate rows for regular expenses and put provision for 10% contingency. Then I removed those rows which were nonessential services to me.

1. I removed the news-paper subscription (now I am having a free e-paper from the Times of India and the Economic Times).

2. I reduced the provision for cell phone bill (I am working consciously to reduce the phone bill).

3. I have started cooking at home which reduced my expenses on eating out.

In the end, I was able to cut my monthly spending by almost Rs. 2000, money I could use to help myself get out of debt . I am planning to cut down my credit card bill by Rs. 12,000 and after this month, the outstanding against my card shall remain at Rs.8,000.

I then went back to my essential bills and looked at the loans carefully. My goals were to reduce or eliminate these. I went through my service rule book to search for some provisions for money advance from my employer at any lower interest rate. To my amazement I found that I can take an advance upto Rs. 50,000 with 0% interest payable in 10 equal monthly installments.

I plan now to accumulate some 20,000 in the coming months and add these interests free Rs 50,000 from my employer to get rid out of my personal loan. I feel that it will take a few months of dedicated approach towards expense cutting to get out of this bad debt situation. To address the issue of marriage and house purchase I shall plan only after I succeed in getting out of the bad debt that I have accumulated.