Why We Started This Journey

 

When Tim and I got married, I brought a lot of debt with me. My students loans, a credit cards (used to cover what students loans didn't) pilled up to a good amount of debt. Tim didn't, and still doesn't, have any credit cards. But, while we were dating he got laid off of work. He lost his truck, which added to our debt, and ruined his credit.

We are starting our debt free journey with $54,000 in debt. This includes all my student loans, credit cards, and car payments.

We were blessed by the fact that due to my teaching at a title 1 school for more that 5 years, I was able to apply for student loan forgiveness. There was a lot of run around but it eventually paid off and the government paid $5,000 of my Sallie Mae loan.

We started our journey March 21st. I will explain the unusual time frame later.

We were both very tired of the stress of having run out of money before the month was over. I think mainly due to the fact that we knew it was our fault. We love to eat out... a lot!

We knew we could do better. So I sat down over spring break and really tried to work out a budget that would work us. I had tried a while back to put us on a budget but didn't put the time and effort into it that I needed to. As Dave Ramsey would say, I wasn't Gazelle Intense.

I really feel like our budget is working for us now. Granted it has only been two weeks, but I am not stressed over money.

We still allow ourselves a restaurant budget and some pocket money. It wouldn't work out if we didn't allow ourselves this.

Next I will try and explain how I put our budget together and what it looks like.