Paula graduated from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York. Her dream was to open her own cafe in Connecticut. She devised a budget and a business plan, but she forgot one thing: Her personal budget.
“I was fresh out of college. Time to open a credit card!” Paula recalls telling herself. “I never really got any sort of finance knowledge. So when I got the credit card, my first thought was, ‘OK, great. Now I can get all the things that I couldn’t afford before, right?’ And so I just continued that line of thinking for the first two years.”
For those two years, Paula managed to make payments on her credit cards. But over the next two years, her balance slowly ballooned to $7,200. As an insurance sales representative, she didn’t earn enough to pay that down and still take care of her monthly bills.
“Eventually, I maxed it out completely, and my credit card company closed the account,” Paula says. “That was the moment reality hit me: I had a real problem, and I didn’t know how to fix it on my own.”
She also didn’t know who could help her fix it.
“I didn’t know where to start, and I was afraid of being judged,” she says. Some online research showed her Consolidated Credit had excellent reviews and a long history of getting people out of debt, “so I reached out, and that changed everything.”
Paula spoke to a certified credit counselor and received a free in-depth debt analysis. Those results pointed her towards a debt management program.
“I’ve only just started my program, but already I feel like a weight has been lifted,” Paula says. “For the first time in a long time, I have a clear plan and a realistic path toward paying off my debt, instead of just feeling stuck and overwhelmed by it.”
That personal path has also put her back on her career path: Opening a cafe called Evergreen. She wants to focus on “vegetarian options for proteins” that go beyond the typical soy burger – although she says she’ll have the best flourless chocolate cake you’ve ever had.
“The only way to make those things taste good is if you put a lot of love into them,” she says. She hopes to open Evergreen in 3-5 years, which will coincide with her being debt-free and building up her finances for her Evergreen dream.
