Goal Breakdown

If you think this information is too personal, feel free not to read it. HAHA ;)
This is one way for me to keep our goals on track and feel accountable. I'll try not to use numbers, but sometimes it's important.

1) Set a budget.

When I wrote down all of our bills/outgoing money - I realized that about 2/3 of the money we make a month has been disappearing. When I started keeping track of our expenses, suddenly we had a lot more to work with. (Even though Greg was laid off in November, God has really taken care of us!) That allows us to knock out the loan debt and build our savings!

2) Set up a savings account to cover 3-6 months worth of bills in case of an emergency. Build on that savings account in order to buy a house/etc someday without going in over our heads.

We have our emergency fund built up! Yay! Now we need to keep socking money away for those 'rainy days' that will inevitably come our way... If we do this, we won't need to borrow any more money! Someday we'll pay in cash for a car, etc. No more debt!


3) Shred the credit cards. Stop relying on them, and stop falling for their 'great deals'. We need to only buy things that we can pay in cash for.

I never believed in credit cards until I got married. (Sorry, Greg.) He said it was a good idea to have one for emergencies and now we have ten. (I'm a sucker for rewards points now!) But you know what - we feel comfortable with our little emergency fund - so it's time to shred those cards! Let me point out that it's much harder to cancel a credit card than it is to get one. It took me an hour and a half to cancel 3 cards tonight. The rest will be taken care of tomorrow.

4) Pay off the student and car loans one at a time, beginning with the smallest. Knock them all out so that we will be living debt free.

#1 Guitar Loan (This is the smallest. We signed up for no interest for a year and decided to put Greg's guitar on the card. I HAD the money to pay in cash, and decided to go the card route instead. So in the end, we spent the cash on car repairs and now we owe on the guitar. Mistake. We have until June to pay it off, but my goal is to have it knocked out by March! Baby steps...) Wouldn't it be cooler if I could pay it off earlier?

#2 Student Loan
#3 Student Loan
#4 Student Loan
#5 Car Loan
#6 LIVE-DEBT-FREE