Well...I don't post anything hardly anymore.  My job is the same every day for the most part, so its hard to post much about that, lol.  I have been trying for a few weeks to post something on our battle of the debts and I always give up, or shut the browser down...never actually finish. 

But lately, I've been getting angry.  At our debt. 

Now, I don't know what others think of Dave Ramsey, but I think whether or not you like him, his viewpoints on Debt are for the most part valid. Debt is dumb.  Its a constant master / slave relationship. Always being in debt, paying money ON money you borrowed that you couldn't afford in the first place.  Its a constant battle.  Something that most Americans are fighting and losing.  Why?  Because of this "I want it now" mentality.

When I was younger, I got my mom to get me a checking account at 16.  I wrote checks for all sorts of stupid crap, including 1 dollar high school lunches.  I never really had a credit card until college when I lost my debit card and told my mom to call the bank, she did and I managed to get a platinum visa card in the mail.  Using it only for emergencies, I somehow took the word emergencies out...and used it for all sorts of crap.  Soon, I was maxed out. 

Flash forward to the present day, we have house debt, student loans, credit cards, vehicle loans...etc.  All totalling.....a lot.  And I get angry.

Angry because I see what I did, and Im noticing each month how little my money is working for me.  Instead of my money working for ME. I am WORKING for my money!  Thats the opposite of how it should be.  I pay a debt...and it goes down very little.  When I see oru debts in a list, I dont just see money, but I see us Owing somebody money, many times with an interest charge.  And when I think of us not having those debts, we would have thousands of dollars more EACH month to invest with, live off of...etc. 

We never really have had a budget or plan on how to spend our money.  Basically it was (and still is) week by week.  Pay bills off as we got them and kept a mental picture in theory of how much money we had.  A few times we would have hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees due to our not keeping records.

Until this spring, it stayed that way.  We had plenty of spending money, but apparently werent paying many bills.  So finally, wanting to get out of debt, I took the reigns over.  The half of the marriage with the ungood math skills. 

So I set up a spreadsheet on Excel, took a budget book / calendar and started keeping track of where our money was going.  It helped tremendously and we stayed above water.  Then someone pointed out to me that I was only recording where we spent the money we had, and NOT how we were planning on spending our money. 

The best way to budget (in my eyes) is to take your income(s) over the month, write down your bills...seperate them out, budget with other stuff such as gas, groceries...etc.  And spread it as best you can, making your money work for you.  Right now for this month, I started doing that.  I get paid x amount weekly and of that, x goes for the bike, x for gas, x for groceries, x for etc.  This allows me to have a great overall view of where our money is going. 

And I think its working so far.  We are making traction and I think the hardest part is getting started.  Marcie had some financial aid money we spent on some debts which while it was dumb financially becase we are still in debt, its a cheaper debt at a much much lower interest. 

In the last two months alone we have closed and paid off five different accounts, one more will be done on next friday.  That last bill alone will give us an extra 4-500 a month to spend on other debts. 

Im gun-ho on this because...I want to just get out of debt and be able to enjoy and live life.  For the past however many years we have been together, we havent really been able to do much because we have no money. But if we can pay off our debts, we will have so much more money to do things with. Travel...etc.  Case in point: with that bill I just mentioned plus another medical bill...if we pay them both off, thats an extra 750 a month. Pay off the credit cards...then we have a couple hundred more...Thats a grand right there. Get the bike paid off along with the car...wed have 2 grand more each month to live with. 

I guess I sound selfish.  and...yeah...I AM.  Im tired of living this way, paycheck to paycheck.  Its hard to argue about money...when money isn't an issue!