Update/bragging

Cyndi and I are doing really, really well with debt right now, thanks in large part to Cyndi's uncle Jeremy lending us a book by Dave Ramsey that talked about budgets and managing money. We started doing a budget in December by taking all our financial statements from the past two months and adding up all the transactions into their different categories. We came to find out that:

1. We were spending nearly 4x the amount on travel than we thought we were with a high guess


2. We were spending more on large, "one-time" buys that were happening on a fairly regular basis (ie "once we get that bookshelf/console/computer part, we won't need to buy another, so it's okay just this one time!")


3. We were growing our credit card debt by a much larger amount than we thought we were.


4. Most of the things that were sucking up our money were things that we could largely do without or cut back on

Here we are, 4.5 months later and we're one month away from our only debt being one car loan and our mortgage. I thought it would take until July or August to pay off this last credit card, but with some tricky accounting we're on track to pay off the last one in mid-May. We have a savings account with a small emergency fund, we both have personal money to spend which is more than we really need anyway, and we're a lot happier with money. After some quick calculations I figure we'll have paid off half of our car loan by the time that next December comes around.

I'm very luck to have Cyndi helping me out with the budget. Even though I do most of the actual number crunching, she's the one who's been able to take the cutbacks in stride so that we (or at least I) haven't even noticed a drop in our quality of life. Also, she's found a way of making chicken alfredo that will send me to an early grave a very happy, heart disease riddled man.