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I am coming clean! My husband and I make a decent living but we are terribly in debt! I watched the Oprah debt diet with the people who are $100,000 + in debt. We are not THAT bad! But we are $23,000 in debt and I want it gone! We have been that much in debt for about 6 years! It doesn't go up...it doesn't go down! And yet we throw money at it all the time! This tells me that we are not living above or below our means, but at it!! So, I joined this sight and I'm hoping our achievements inspire someone else. Furthermore, we are not big shoppers or even little shoppers. We don't like to shop. We suffer from "leaky wallet syndrome". Of course life got in the way too: 2 house payments for 11 months (never again!!!!!) and DH lost his job for 9 months. Both incidents racked up the debt.
1. We stopped using the cards! The balances are not going to be paid in full each month so I'm going to stop telling myself they are!
2. DH took on a second part time job which will bring in $700/mo. Yay! It's a "church gig" so $100 will go back to the church, $500 goes directly to the cards and I told DH the remaining $100 should be mad money for him. My dear husband decided to invest it. He's a good guy!
3. The biggest step I have taken is looking at our electric bill, which I just did yesterday, after being motivated by some posts here. I decided it was ok to turn the A/C up to 74. That's much better than 68! We both still really like cooler sleeping conditions, so I turn it back down to 68 at night, but I figure it is easier on the unit to cool it that much in the evening hours anyway! Small steps, right? I also went around and unplugged unused appliances. I wasn't going to do that, but as I did it I was surprised I had as many as I did. I've started turning off the computer at night. In so doing I realized how much the computer heats up the room it is in! Upstairs, in the computer room, I also closed the curtains which keeps the blazing sun out. Even with turning the air up (or down, depending on how you look at it...I made it warmer
), I think the computer room is cooler than it was!
4. I've taken on the challenge to spend no money in a week's time, and I think I will keep it up in intervals.
5. We have cut our dining out spending from a rediculous $500/mo to probably $50/mo or so. It's hard to say because we just took two vacations nearly back to back and eating out naturally goes up on vacation. I'm looking forward to tracking that savings.
6. I'm back to shopping at Aldi's. I'm not sure why I stopped! I save at least 60% there without sacrificing anything, in my opinion. The only thing I personally dislike about Aldi's is the rush to unload the items on the cart, the rush to load them back into the cart and then the bagging them myself. It's hard with kids. Shoot, it's hard without kis! But I think for my next trip I'm just going to take a rectangular laundry basket with me. I will still have to unload onto the cart, but then I can just throw it all back into the cart and go.
7. I took a hard look at my regular bills. I'm not exactly willing to give anything up, so I am trying to see if I can get better deals. Everything is about as cheap as it gets except for our phones. I think we can do better there. I checked online with our phone carrier. We are paying $50/mo for landline with caller ID and 100 free long distance minutes, which we never go over, but do use. I thought that was the cheapest plan, but online they advertise for $26.95. I don't think taxes and fees can be that much, but maybe I'm wrong. Also, my cell phone is $39.95 and I'm wondering if a prepaid phone wouldn't be a better option for me. I'm not on the phone all that much and my cell phone literally stays in my car. I mostly use it to talk mobile to mobile to DH which is apparently free minutes even with a prepaid from Verizon. I'm looking into that.
We're going to get that debt down, penny by penny. It will happen!
1. We stopped using the cards! The balances are not going to be paid in full each month so I'm going to stop telling myself they are!
2. DH took on a second part time job which will bring in $700/mo. Yay! It's a "church gig" so $100 will go back to the church, $500 goes directly to the cards and I told DH the remaining $100 should be mad money for him. My dear husband decided to invest it. He's a good guy!
3. The biggest step I have taken is looking at our electric bill, which I just did yesterday, after being motivated by some posts here. I decided it was ok to turn the A/C up to 74. That's much better than 68! We both still really like cooler sleeping conditions, so I turn it back down to 68 at night, but I figure it is easier on the unit to cool it that much in the evening hours anyway! Small steps, right? I also went around and unplugged unused appliances. I wasn't going to do that, but as I did it I was surprised I had as many as I did. I've started turning off the computer at night. In so doing I realized how much the computer heats up the room it is in! Upstairs, in the computer room, I also closed the curtains which keeps the blazing sun out. Even with turning the air up (or down, depending on how you look at it...I made it warmer
), I think the computer room is cooler than it was!4. I've taken on the challenge to spend no money in a week's time, and I think I will keep it up in intervals.
5. We have cut our dining out spending from a rediculous $500/mo to probably $50/mo or so. It's hard to say because we just took two vacations nearly back to back and eating out naturally goes up on vacation. I'm looking forward to tracking that savings.
6. I'm back to shopping at Aldi's. I'm not sure why I stopped! I save at least 60% there without sacrificing anything, in my opinion. The only thing I personally dislike about Aldi's is the rush to unload the items on the cart, the rush to load them back into the cart and then the bagging them myself. It's hard with kids. Shoot, it's hard without kis! But I think for my next trip I'm just going to take a rectangular laundry basket with me. I will still have to unload onto the cart, but then I can just throw it all back into the cart and go.
7. I took a hard look at my regular bills. I'm not exactly willing to give anything up, so I am trying to see if I can get better deals. Everything is about as cheap as it gets except for our phones. I think we can do better there. I checked online with our phone carrier. We are paying $50/mo for landline with caller ID and 100 free long distance minutes, which we never go over, but do use. I thought that was the cheapest plan, but online they advertise for $26.95. I don't think taxes and fees can be that much, but maybe I'm wrong. Also, my cell phone is $39.95 and I'm wondering if a prepaid phone wouldn't be a better option for me. I'm not on the phone all that much and my cell phone literally stays in my car. I mostly use it to talk mobile to mobile to DH which is apparently free minutes even with a prepaid from Verizon. I'm looking into that.
We're going to get that debt down, penny by penny. It will happen!
. But, every spare penny is indeed going toward debt...literally. I rolled two rolls of pennies last night. $1.00. Ooooooh. 
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