Working Myself to Death

So I work long hours at Verizon Wireless to pay the bills. The last three days I have been working 12 hour shifts with minimal lunches and it's been really taking a toll on my attitude. I try to be positive and friendly at work since I work a very stressful job where you can plan on being pissed off most of the time and I figure my co workers could use as much friendliness as they can get. Instead of being smiley and happy Jess I have been grumpy and sleepy Jess. I did this to myself since I want to pay off my debt in a hurry.

Suze Orman has said that now is the worst time to have credit card debt because the credit card companies are going to be lowering limits, raising interest rates and causing lower credit scores. Currently, I have an almost 30% interest rate on my Dell laptop account. (Which is beyond ridiculous.) I agreed to let a friend of mine buy a laptop on my credit since he has crappy credit from his divorce. I understand that since I had bad credit I have climbed from under due to my divorce. He has been late in paying me so I have been paying the payments and he pays me back. The only problem is that he's paying only slightly more than the minimum payments so it will take years to pay this damned laptop off if I don't make bigger payments due to the interest accruing. My work has been stingy with overtime lately so I haven't been able to bring in enough pay to cover this debt I wasn't expecting to have to pay. Now that the Blackberry Storm is launching, they are handing out the overtime and I am taking all I can get my hands on. Here's the reason why:

40 hours are paid at 17.84/hour (at my current pay rate)
hours 41-51 are paid at 26.76/hour
hours 51+ are paid at 35.68/hour

Next week we have a holiday that I automatically get paid for on both Thanksgiving and the day after. My call center is open both holidays so that means that on both those days I will be making double time and a half (44.60/hour) and up to triple time (53.52/hour). I am going to be working 12 hour shifts both of those days and what will happen is in one pay period of 2 weeks, I will have enough in just overtime to pay off the laptop.

I bring this up to show how a little extra work can surmount huge obstacles. Not everyone can stomach this kind of schedule and it's down right impossible for people with daycare issues. So my advice is this, pay your highest APR credit off first, use coupons (yes it sucks to have to coupon clip and remember to use them up but saving 20 dollars a month can be another 20 dollars to financial freedom), and pay more on your bills so you have very little play money left. That way anyone can get out from financial duress. I left my divorce with a 540 credit score and today it's near 700 just from learning not only to spend less, but to spend wisely.