Let's Do This!!!... again.

Ok so here we are an entire year later. I cant believe 12 months has passed. We started last year with a goal of paying of 75k in debt and made it to 40k. I'm not disappointed in our progress, since we had a few bumps in the road here and there. Our goal remains the same, to pay off our house and all other debt. Including Our house, and every other bit of debt we have, the total is $450,410.99. I know... ouch. Last year I decided not to list actual numbers, but this year I think it will be more interesting if I post actual numbers and progress. Later I'll break that debt into categories, but for now I just wanted to post the big chunk -o-rama. It scares me a little to look at that number, seriously. It really scares me to know that a little over a year ago, I thought that was completely normal and fine to be paying things off over time. Anyways, our goal this year is to pay off 60k in debt. I do have a 2008 mini van that I LOVE, and the kids LOVE, but we are going to try to get rid of it because we owe 26k on it.
I think for a long time, before I heard of Dave Ramsey, we were just like everyone else, thinking that debt was just a normal part of life. Car loans, house loans, student loans... just normal stuff, right? Well not really. Not at all actually. The debt monster is awful. Hopefully we can stay on track and our 5 year plan which started last year. So four years left, and I feel ok with our progress. Wish me luck and I'll be posting more on here about money saving ideas and ways to keep your budget!!

Happy New Year everyone!

A quick update on our progress...

I meant to put this in the last post, but just to let everyone know, we're doing ok and somewhat on track. Since Jan 1st, approx 4 months, we've paid off $26,083 in awful horrible debt!!! Wooohoooo!!!!

So long really-cool-motorcycle!!

In complete Dave Ramseyism style, my husband sold his most prized possession yesterday. - his favorite toy - the Suzuki GSXR 1000... He was so happy to buy this cash a couple years ago, and I feel so bad that we had to let it go, but we are just on a different path now. Thanks Paris, just remember, we are living like no one else so later we can live like no one else!!

Keeping up with the Jones's...

So I've really been struggling lately...although we've paid of so much debt its really hard not to get back into feeling like we have to have this, have to buy that. Occasionally I'll visit a home or cients house that I'm just so jealous of, and especially lately, its just a really hard thing to think that it wont be until the end of 2010 that we have all our debt except the house paid off, and we can start buying stuff again, slowly of course, and always smart spending. Soon we will be able to buy furniture and invest money in fixing up the house. When we do, it will be comfortably and never worrying about which credit card we'll use or if we have to wait for a paycheck to come in before we do something. So anyways, not much info in this post, just a little venting. :)

An Update!! - (Finally)

So I didn't realize how much busier I would be after committing to this program. My husband has been working like crazy and honestly I've become a little overwhelmed with him gone so much. He works 24 hour shifts as a firefighter so that makes it a little tough. I just wanted to update our progress real quick, since its been so long! I promise to blog more often for all my followers (ok just both of them) :) So the grand total of debt we've paid off in 9 weeks, since January 1st, is $16,948.81. This is a little less than I planned, but breeding my bulldog this time was about $2k and of course we are paying cash for everything now, so usually I would have put it on the credit card but this time it came straight out of the regular budget (ouch!). So there it is, almost 17k. Not too shabby!! Until next time...

..and the cable is GONE!!!

So really its not that bad. Aside from the fact that my husband just about broke down in tears when the cable guy came to do his thing, which officially cut off the connection to every tv in the house. I kind of like the limited channels... no more annoying Nickelodeon, no more constant drum of the same old shows. We were paying about $155/month for our way-to-many-options cable line up. How can anyone watch that much TV anyways? Of course on top of that there was the almost monthly UFC fight which added 44.95, so really we were paying nearly $200/month for TV. I reduced our internet speed from the lightning fast to the "value" speed which so far I haven't noticed any difference at all in anything I do. Most of our TV favs are on the network channels anyways, which we get for $11.50 per month. Sounds a little nicer than $200, don't ya think?

By the way, tonight I will be making my own laundry detergent. I'll let you know how it goes and post the recipe also.

January 1st, 2009 - Day #1 on our journey to a debt free life!!

Welcome to my life and my blog. I really hate debt, and thats what this blog is about. Here's a quick intro... In the past 5 years that my husband and I have been married, we've enjoyed alot of things. Cruises, nice cars, a great house, the freedom to buy pretty much whatever we wanted for our kids and ourselves. However, it has all come to us at a price. We, like most Americans, have justified buying on credit and financing the things we just dont have cash for. Afterall, most people do it! We never thought twice about buying things "on credit" because thats just the way things are, right? No!! I recently began listening to Dave Ramsey. If you haven't had a chance to yet, download a few podcasts and you will start catching on pretty quickly. Its just so sad that nearly everyone in the country thinks like this, that credit and debt are a normal and acceptable part of life.

It took me some time, but I convinced my husband and beginning today, we have begun our Dave Ramsey program. Its simple really, don't buy crap you don't need, and pay off your debt!! After that, there are other steps to follow of course, to help with our goal of having a great retirement, being able to help the kids through college, and give like we never have before!! My goal is to spend very little, and increase our incomes significantly to do this. I will be starting a coupon program called Grocery Smarts, and will blog about this as I learn to use the program, since I just started learning about it. (We spent nearly $1400 on food in December of 2008, so my goal is to reduce our grocery bill to $300 by using this program and also cutting fast food and restaurants out of our "whats for dinner" options"

I hope this will be a place I can share the ups and downs of our journey as we try to accomplish our goal for 2009, which is to pay off approximately $70,000 worth of debt. (You can laugh all you want!!) We can do it will some self control, discipline and alot of hard work from both of us. We will both have to work a little more than we'd like to, give up a lot of things we really enjoy, and I'm planning on ebaying everything except the kids to become debt free. Good luck to us!

Happy New Year everyone!!!