The start of our journey to being debt free!

We actually started this journey in March of 2010. We did well our first year of eliminating debt (mostly school loans, a car loan, a couple credit cards), but not as well as we could have. We bought a house a few months ago, and in the long run that will save us money on rent (and it is much cheaper than renting in this area!), but it set us back a few months. Recently, we haven't been doing well paying on our school loans (meaning we haven't paid any extra!) because we were saving up for a down payment since December 2010 and then we were buying things for our house. Well that is over! We have recently become sick and tired of living paycheck to paycheck and we want financial freedom. We started doing Financial Peace University, the at home study, with Dave Ramsey. We are finally getting on the same page and are going to commit to being debt free as soon as we can.

It's not fun to sacrifice our wants, but it's important to "Live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else."

It's been a bit discouraging lately because at times we will get made fun of for how we are living and people look at us funny, because it is not the normal thing to do. People are so used to using credit cards and taking out loans, etc. But we have decided that we are sticking to a strictly cash budget - and that budget will not be broken (unless emergencies come up). Even though people around us may not understand, it is very important for us to have a plan and it will allow us to one day start a family. I don't want to go through life being financially unwise, I want to have a plan.

So here's to our start of our completely committed debt free journey. I think it will be good for me to write it out and keep track of how well we are doing. I'm sort of ashamed at how much student loan debt we had and wish we had been advised better. But we take full responsibility and we WILL pay off these loans asap!

To date - we are $72,000 in student loan debt and 54,000 in debt with our mortgage. I'm excited to have this to look back on, showing that this is POSSIBLE! Lord help us so that we can give more freely with our money!!