Money isn't the root of all evil...eating out all of the time is!

But not really. Money isn't the root of all evil, debt is. Borrowing is. Wasteful spending is. Money isn't. Recently, I have been REALLY worried about finances. And when I say finances I mean regular monthly bills and expenses.

The mortgage is paid directly out of my paycheck (1st and 2nd mortgages), the car is paid out of my paycheck, so off the top I pay out around $1600 per month out of my pay. Then I have distributions going to various accounts to save for other expenses like car insurance, life insurance, kids expenses, Christmas savings, etc. All in all, I'm left with around $600 per month for all other household expenses. Gas, Electric, Cell Phone, Sewer, Water, and gas for the cars. Don't forget the credit card payments and groceries have to come from that too.

The numbers just didn't add up and I was constantly borrowing to pay for regular expenses. It didn't make sense, but I saw no other way to keep things paid up. So I was considering trying to find a part time job to make ends meet a bit more. How on earth am I gonna fit a part time job into my already very busy schedule?? Work one night a week and every weekend?

About two years ago, I told Eric that we needed to seriously create a budget. He liked his way of keeping his bills separate from mine, and for the most part it was "working" (in my mind, maybe his too) because things were being paid fine, never late or not at all. We were keeping up, so it must be ok, right?? Last year, when we got our bonuses cut at my job, it made things even worse. Now I don't RELY on bonuses, but they helped a LOT for "silly" expenses like getting chemicals/supplies for the pool that were necessary, but unplanned for. (My fault, should have been saving for them but how??) I started to really stress about the expenses and began telling Eric, "I don't have money for that right now, if you do, we can". Whether that was eating out, going to an event, or checking out a movie. Soon, he began to pay for more things, but it ended up just created more debt on him and we were both scraping by.

My sister gave me Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover book a couple of years ago that I never read. At work, they had a Financial Peace University program they were hoping employees would take advantage of. Only trouble was, materials were $100 that I didn't have. I began reading the book I had and my eyes were opened to the mess we'd gotten ourselves into.

Now Mr. Ramsey is a bit radical in his approach to attacking debt. Sell the car, the stuff in your basement, get four jobs if you have to for a short time, and get out of debt other than the house QUICK. I'm not quite ready to become that intense. I know Eric and I and we're better with doing stuff with baby steps to be successful. So we sat down and to my amazement, he was very receptive to what I had to say. <3 He was feeling the "crunch" too now and willing to listen I guess.

When I showed him that the way we're living just simply can't continue, he couldn't argue with the numbers. lol Together we came up with a budget and a plan to payoff all of our debt except the car and house in about 3.5-4 years. It would start with next year's income tax refund and we would dedicate future years' tax returns to payoff things until done. All the while applying previous payments of the paid off cards to the existing cards to accelerate the payoffs.

I asked my Dad and Mom if they could lend us $5k to help get us started. That would payoff three of the loans and save us more than $250/m, plus leave a bit of a small cushion of a couple hundred to keep us in a good cashflow position as we set up the new budget. We knew we could easily afford to payback $5k with income tax and still have money leftover from that to put in savings for an "emergency fund". Not only were they willing to help, they GAVE us the money and more than we asked for! I was floored...and humbled. With their help, we will most likely have all of the credit cards paid off in a year and a half to two years instead of the 3 and a half to 4 we were planning! (and that $5k we were planning on paying them back next year will just be able to payoff something else) If all goes well, we may even have the car paid off within that time frame (about 2 yrs) too, but we'll see!

The biggest hurdle and one that really wasn't hard to jump over was getting Eric to agree to create a joint account that we would pool our money into to pay the household bills from. Remember he previously gave me a whopping $125/m to help toward the household bills? He's now contributing $900/m to the joint checking account! We also agreed to check with each other before spending anything more than $50 (once this is all done and we can actually spend a bit again). We're looking at ALL areas of our finances and it's the first time in the 10 years he's been with me that we are working TOGETHER financially. (we've been married for 6, but even after we were married, we kept things separated) The best thing I heard him say during all of this is: "I wish I hadn't been so stubborn and we did this sooner". Means he's really on board with everything, which I'm REALLY happy about.

It was important to really get out from under this now because my kids are almost to the age where the ex no longer has to pay child support. I never wanted to rely on his child support (never know if he'd lose his job or something) and not only was I relying on it, but if it was late, it caused me trouble too. With all of this, we're going to be in such a good financial position in a short time, I won't have to worry about if something happens.

The PEACE that all of this has brought on has been phenomenal. The JOY of being unburdened and no longer enslaved by the debt is an emotion I can't really describe. The EXCITEMENT of my husband and I actually working together to accomplish something is what I've longed for, for quite some time. We have a shared vision now, and it's good!

We've even put our credit cards in a lock box (didn't cut them up...don't want to CLOSE the credit and ruin our score), and ceremoniously vowed not to use them without discussion first. If it's in savings to spend, we can use the card and pay it off immediately to keep it open/active.

We're taking our lunches, getting plain label stuff when grocery shopping, and cutting expenses too, wherever we can. Eric will be working some overtime soon, which will help even more.

There's a light at the end of our debt tunnel, and thankfully with the gift from my parents, we'll dig out a lot faster than we planned!