A new perspective leads to a new outlook on life, living and... living

This story really begins only a few months ago.

My old 3 year old Blackberry Curve finally kicked the bucket, so I decided to switch to a Samsung Galaxy phone. An S4 to be precise, for no other reason than its a Korean smart phone brand.

A dumb reason I know, but I gots to support my peeps!

Many would call "Korean pride' a highly misplaced reason to make consumer choices though.

The move not only meant I lost the ability to type and walk without even looking at the keyboard (a trick I still lament to this day) but made up for it by opening up the opportunity for me to get some fabulous apps, apps that otherwise would have made my antiquated Blackberry smoke at the corners trying to operate it.

And one of those apps happened to be a money manager app.

So here's the confession: I have a bit of sordid history with money and money management, in that I hated money and did as much as I could to ignore it. And I don't mean hated money a little. I mean a lot. We didn't get along very much money and I.

Oh, I made sure I always had some kind of money in the bank so I never (or rather, rarely ever) hit overdraft but that was about it. From the age of 18 until I turned 26 I had three major financial crises because I spent a lot of time ignoring my finances, my circumstances and my earnings and ended up not having the money to pay off what was then important: my university tuition.

All three times I ended up getting out of it, but not out of my own power but due to having a wonderfully generous then-boyfriend who bailed me out to the tune of at least one thousand dollars, which back then felt like an unattainable fortune to me.

And yet somehow, while they made me a little more wary, those three crises still didn't completely snap me out of my problem with money. I still hated it, rather ignored it and still spent pretty freely for one reason or another. And racked up an insane amount of student debt.

It's a bit funny now thinking about what triggered my change of heart when it came to my relationship with money and finances given the number of legitimately serious situations I've been in with money leading up to right now.

But I think it's because mentally, physically and most importantly, emotionally I can actually deal with it now.

I was out of control the first half of my twenties. I know this now. I was trying to get a degree in a subject I abhorred and unable to grind it out, I felt like a massive failure and had no idea what I wanted to do in life. As a result I was struck by a real fear that I'd be abandoned to a life of minimum wage service jobs. And in trying to avoid all of these issues, it made me delusional about everything.

I could barely handle my life let alone my money. Although some would say those go hand in hand.

Since then, my life has figured itself out. I eventually did graduate with Honours, and in a subject that while had a low hireability was a field I enjoyed so immensely that it also gave me the opportunity and ability to focus on what I wanted and what I needed to do to achieve my dream.

And now, career-wise, I couldn't be happier. I work full-time in my chosen field doing something that I truly love from the bottom of my heart and that I'm good at. The salary isn't what anyone would call impressive, but in my eyes, it's a small price to pay to be working at a job that makes me happy, excited and pleased to be a part of.

Keeping this feeling is important. Which is partially what led me to decide that I need to be able to make this salary work in my life in order to stay happy. Or rather, make my life work well with my money.

But even that wasn't what actually triggered this change of heart.

What triggered my decision to be more money conscious and have a much more healthy and active relationship with my money was when in July I realized I was paying more money in interest on my credit card than I was on my internet.

Yep. After everything I've been through and everything I've done, a $50 dollar interest charge on my credit card was what finally made me rethink my debt, my wealth and my relationship with money.

Two months later, and after two exhausting weeks of very profitable but time-consuming freelance work on top of my regular job, I dropped the last $700 of the $2,600 balance owed I had on my oldest credit card, a card in which I've carried a balance on since 2006. And am now free of any and all credit card debt.

But I say only credit card debt though because I still owe the government a car; that is to say there's more yet to come as I owe way more than $2,600 dollars in student loan debt.

But hey, no credit card debt is a start. And at least I'm starting somewhere.