<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Regular viewers of CNBC&amp;amp;#8217;s &amp;amp;#8220;On The Money&amp;amp;#8221; may have seen my appearance on Friday night&amp;amp;#8217;s show&amp;amp;#8212;and already heard my semi-big news. (Did anyone notice the buried reference I made to it in Friday&amp;amp;#8217;s post? I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t think so. I&amp;amp;#8217;m crafty like that.)Silly pig! Put your credit card in the freezer. The thing is, as much fun as I have sharing great deals and getting your good advice (which I love to do!) I still have a pretty big financial mess that I need to actually deal with. So I&amp;amp;#8217;ve had a couple meetings with my &amp;amp;#8220;debt doctor,&amp;amp;#8221; Carmen Wong Ulrich, which were filmed for her show. (Scroll all the way down to see the clip, if you&amp;#x27;re bored at work.) The first thing she suggested I tackle was my credit card debt. You may recall from this post that the grand total on my seven cards was only $1,047. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not a ton of money, but since some of my cards have interest rates as high as 29 percent (yikes!) the balances were costing me loads. So I paid them all off. (!!) Because I&amp;amp;#8217;m a freelancer, none of my employers take taxes out of my paychecks&amp;amp;#8212;it&amp;amp;#8217;s up to me to set aside enough money and pay them quarterly. Since I haven&amp;amp;#8217;t done this quarter&amp;amp;#8217;s taxes (I have an appointment on May 27), I dipped into that savings to pay off my cards. (Hopefully this won&amp;amp;#8217;t come back to bite me in the butt in two weeks &amp;amp;#133;) My credit cards weren&amp;amp;#8217;t my biggest problems right now (those would be impulse purchases and debts that are in collection), but it&amp;amp;#8217;s such a relief to wash my hands of something, you know? The next step: Figuring out how much I spend, so I can get myself on some sort of budget. Carmen has suggested I write down every single transaction I make, every single day (and save every single receipt) for a month. So I&amp;amp;#8217;m starting today. (And I&amp;amp;#8217;m going to try to get Rory to do the same.) Any of my in-debt readers want to join me? Or any of my not-in-debt readers? Carmen says it&amp;amp;#8217;s also a smart exercise for already responsible types. (Here&amp;amp;#8217;s looking at you, sweatpants_and_beer_girl and ooglas.) Does anyone already do this? And does it help? Photo: iStock. Video: CNBC"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/little-miss-fortune/2009/05/this-being-financially-respons>