33yo, 30k debt, just started a new job and want to start saving money while paying off my cards

The best way to save money right now is to kick that credit card debt to the curb as soon as possible. It's not an insurmountable task - don't look at the totals, just knock it down evenly (since the APR is even) with any money you intended to save.

Talk to banks about personal loans, try to get a personal loan or consolidate all of that debt, you'll be able to find lower APR than 20% on personal loans, and you can knock out the lowest balance ones that way, less payments to worry about and less APR is less total money thrown at it.

Once you chip it down, keep chipping, it'll take a while, but Rome wasn't built in a day, you'll hit 0 and break even soon enough! It might take a while, but every time you lob money at it, your credit will go up because your debt to income will be better and your utilized credit will be lower, so not only will you be digging out of debt but you'll be improving your credit - 2 good things to look forward to!

Once you are above all of it, remember how much it sucks to be in that mess, and try to make that a main reason to save.

Climbing out of debt kind of sucks, but there are some good things to look at, and it's unfortunately a slow moving process (about as slow as digging in to debt). Just focus on making those balances hit 0.

Don't pay everything minimum payments with money left over, the more debt you have, the more money you piss away in APR, you had 300-400 left over each month, throw that 300-400 a month at debt. The additional money from your new job, that 250-800, throw that at debt also. Hold onto some money in case of emergency (a few thousand bucks), but try to knock out as much debt as possible.

Once you hit 0, you'll have pretty solid discipline in taking decent amounts of money and throwing it at things (awesome!), so use that discipline to throw spare money in the bank, and you'll be golden!

/r/personalfinance Thread Parent