<prompt> Human: _I didnt mean for this to get so extensive, and I should probably edit it. If you dont want to read it all, you can skip down to the LESSONS LEARNED subheading. Or dont read it at all. Thats cool, whatever; this is for me._ BACKSTORY:Im using a throwaway for privacys sake, but I just wanted to share a breakthrough in my ongoing personal finance journey. For backgrounds sake, Im 27 now, and I hand a stunted beginning to my professional career.Until about a year ago, I was incredibly responsible with my money. I had built myself up, over two years, from the high-500s in my various credit scores to the low-700s. I went from no savings and no assets to comfortably subsisting as an actual adult. I paid all my bills on time, paid off my credit card balance every month, and lived within my means. I even cleaned up some of my financial sins from my early twenties, getting two bills that were placed for collection completely expunged from my credit report via a combination of luck and what I learned here I did pay the 400 balance on one of them, but it appears nowhere on any of my three reports, and paying off a 2,500 debt to an insurance company for a car crash Id been in a year or so prior.Was I putting enough in savings? No. Was I pinching every penny? Not the way the more extreme members of rfrugal would have one do, but I drove a 10-year-old car and almost never dined out and didnt blow money I didnt have on impulse purchases. I worked a fairly low-paying job 40,000 in a high cost-of-living area, but I had two roommates in an affordable-for-the-area house. I took a couple of small, affordable vacations in the summer and fall of 2014, but I bought most of my clothes at thrift stores and found a balance where I wasnt blowing too much cash at bars with my friends but still enjoyed my life as a mid-20s person in a fun city and built up a meager emergency fund.SHIT HAPPENS SOMETIMES:Then, last year came. I spent down my savings in January between a luxury purchase an item Id coveted for a long time, and planned to budget for, went on sale for 40 off and I acted immediately and flying across the country on three-days notice for my grandmothers funeral. It was my plan to rapidly replace those funds, but in March and April I hit a rough patch, professionally. My earnings were impacted, and I had a tough time with the personal side of the situation as well. I saw the writing on the wall and began applying to other jobs, but in May things came to a head and I was fired.Luckily, three days after I was let go, I got a call informing me Id been hired by a company Id applied hard for. It was a drastic raise to 48,000 a year, and a much better situation working in a stable department for a publicly-traded Fortune 100 company. Unfortunately, it was 2,000 miles away. Closer to friends and family, great, but my new employer wasnt covering relocation expenses. In addition, I had to start in a few weeks, and there were another couple of months on my rent.THIS IS ME, ACTIVELY HURLING THAT SHIT AT A FAN:I managed to pull all the logistics together, but I let my finances slide. I still paid all my bills with what cash I had, but I began racking up credit card debt. A few weeks before I lost my job, seeing the writing on the wall, I applied for two credit cards with friendly 0 intro APR periods and was approved for healthy credit limits. In addition, after I was approved for those cards my original credit card company increased my limit on THAT card from 2,000 to 7,000. When the time came to move, I sort of went into a financial daze, and stopped closely tracking my money the way I had previously.I spent a month out of work and without pay was not approved for unemployment. I spent that time AND another month-and-a-half sleeping on my friends couches and trying to find a decent place of my own. I didnt live extravagantly during that time, but I had to make some tough choices. I bought a shitbox car old one had died a year prior, had been using public transportation because there were no other transit options in my new home. I didnt have the cash, so I floated the money from my credit card through Paypal. I still did normal social things with my friends, instead of begging off for lack of money. My living situation, though, is the thing that broke me.I wanted to live alone, and thats absolutely not the most frugalresponsible choice, but its what I really wanted. I wound up signing a lease for a 900month apartment 20 minutes from my job. Not incredibly expensive for the area, but I couldve saved a lot of money living with someone else. In addition, I still had another months rent to pay on my old apartment, so I wound up incredibly cash poor for a while. Then, once I actually moved in, I really lost my mind. I made the regrettable decision that I had to have everything all at once, and spent close to 3,000 on home furnishings. My ex-roommates had owned all the furniture we needed before, so I had very little besides bedroom stuff. I plunked down for a decent sofa, dinner table, chairs, a kitchen cart, and oh: the kitchen implements. I love to cook, and I couldnt help but fill my kitchen up with well-reviewed pots and pans and tools. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I had this vision of the life I wanted and didnt want to wait to put it together. It was a creeping, slowly-expanding thing, with more Amazon boxes showing up every week with this thing or that. Ive thought a lot about it and, I feel like after my professional humiliation, and the personal stress of leaving and friends and the entire life Id built behind, I wanted to feel successful and whole again.At the end of it, I had about 10,000 in credit card debt. Before this, Id never carried even a cent month-over-month. In addition, my student loan payments had kicked up as a result of my increased income, from 79month to 339month. I was driving an awful car I got screwed by a guy wed worked with a few times before, bad on gas and sucking up money for maintenance AND approaching the end of its useful life. I had serious pain from an unaddressed dental issue and I was spending so, SO much waking time stressing about my finances. I had stopped the worst of the bleeding, was living within my means on a monthly basis, but it was a razors edge. Every time a surprise expense came up I would just throw in on the debt pile.FIXING SHIT:Finally, one day, I found it within myself to retake control. I took responsibility for my actions, and leaned back on my personal guiding principle: I cant change whats already happened; all I can do is the right thing going forward. My story is not an instruction manual for getting out of debt. In the nine months since I made the choice to get better, Ive worked hard and had some luck and fortunate circumstances benefit me. Not everyone has access to the same opportunities I have, and I certainly could being doing more. My parents are incredibly understanding and supportive so I came clean to them and asked for a personal loan. They lent me 6,000 from their retirement funds theyre old enough to draw without penalties to take care of one credit card that was about to begin accruing interest. Im paying them back 250 a month until theyve recouped ever penny. Not everyone has that as a resource, I know, and Im lucky that it was even possible. I have a good job with the best benefits Ive ever had. Im healthy enough so far to not need anything beyond my annual physical, and the dental plan is decent enough.Im continuing to handle my current finances and started paying down the old stuff. Slowly, at first, but Ive been able to commit more and money to the effort. When a card got close to the end of the 0 APR intro period, Id open a new one and transfer the balance. Even at my worst, I never got behind on my living expenses, and now Im even ahead.Have I been perfect? Not at all. I dont live a rFrugal_Jerk life. I treat my girlfriend to dinner out and buy a bottle of gin or a twelve-pack of decent beer with regularity. I had a bit of a relapse when I spent extravagantly on Christmas gifts for her and our families, but I kept my head on my shoulders and refused to spiral back out of control. I replaced the rustbucket car, financing a four-year-old hatchback with fairly low mileage at a fair price on two days notice after my old car died. Yes, rFrugal will tell you to get a 2,500 used car, but Im doing 2,000 miles a month, and the value is there for me. I even got a root canal for my broken tooth, and I could go on and on about the difference improved dental health can do for someones sanity.Im not out of the woods yet. I still have a long way to go in paying off my credit card debt, but I have around 1,500 in tax refunds that are completely earmarked for it, and my credit is somehow still healthy enough to keep securing cards with good balance transfer offers. Im not worried about accruing interest on those balances and I trust myself enough to keep paying them down while avoiding new debt.LESSONS LEARNED:Its okay to fuck up. You probably will at some point. Ive written advice here on rpersonalfinance that has been widely upvoted and submitted to rbestof, and I still got in way over my head. Humans are emotional creatures, life may not always trend 100 upward, and sometimes youll have the wrong reaction. You can get better, though. My situation wasnt the worst ever, but it wasnt leading me towards the life I want to live. There are compromise Im not willing to make, but Ive changed and bent enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Itll be another year or so before Im free and clear, and probably another year after that until Im able to build my savings up to where I want, but I feel like I can do all that and still live in a way that makes me happy.TL;DR: Spent unnecessarily during a big life change, am working my way out of it incrementally while still feeling like I enjoy my life.  <response>: Thank you so much for sharing this. You will receive hate and judgement from some of the members here, but your heart is in the right place. You did not go into victim mode, and you are working hard on fixing the problems. With this kind of attitude, you will do very well for yourself. Dont let anyone talk to you down. You already know about the mistakes you made. Work hard on fixing them! Good luck to you! 