Hopped On The Bandwagon

I went out and bought both Total Money Makeover and Total Money Makeover Workbook by Dave Ramsey. The workbook had to be ordered, so I'm not sure if I needed it or not... But I'm sure it can't hurt!

I'm pretty amped on this whole debt free living thing and I actually believe we can be without debt (other than our house) by the end of the year. Besides, with the Republican nominations being led by McCain (who is so not fiscally conservative!) I figure we need to have as little debt as possible before we have a completely liberal power in DC.

While I was reading the book I realized just how much stuff Doug & I have that we don't need- or use- or even really notice. Thankfully we are able to pay cash so we aren't racking up debt. But what we aren't doing is working toward paying our debt down quickly.

So, what am I doing... Well, I've figured out our debt snowball plan, as that is the second step. I'm hopeful about this plan because you can see debt disappearing faster. Everything I've ever read says "high interest goes away first". By getting rid of the smallest stuff first you see progress faster- which keeps you going. Simple, yet brilliant.

I'm slowly going through our house and taking everything we haven't used in the past year and moving it to my garage sale pile. This includes DVDs that we bought, watched once, and don't care to see again. There will be piles of DVDs.

Other than that I am just cutting costs as I am in a holding pattern until step 2 is done.

Obviously a vacation isn't "cutting costs" but we paid for that with cash and will have cash from our tax refund to use for it (as well as cover costs from Doug missing a week of work) so I'm not too stressed about it causing a problem. But I will be watching what we spend money on while we are there...

I'm hoping Doug gets excited about this. Right now I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a bit crazy and is waiting for it to pass.