I debated on whether or not to post this because it approaches the taboo subject of money. Even worse, it's extremely personal. It's about my household debt, but I think in the end I have been hiding long enough. That's part of the problem.
Pants and I have managed to build up a very large amount of debt in the last year. I can lie to you and tell you it's because our daycare expense is so large, along with our other bills, but it's not. It's because we have always been somewhat frivolous with money. In the past, we have made enough and kept our bills low enough to be able to absorb the crap we were purchasing. With the added $1400 expense per month, we could no longer afford all that stuff but we continued living like we could. And now here we are.
We have been in denial for months about our situation but I finally put all of our debt on paper and showed Pants tonight. He has gone out for a drive to try to absorb the numbers and figure out how this could happen in a year. I'm a bit farther on the acceptance chain and am trying to figure out how we're going to get out of it.
Pants and I have concocted a plan. Or more accurately, I have stolen a plan from Dave Ramsey's book, "The Total Money Makeover" and Pants is willing to go along with it. For now, every dollar will be tracked and every available dollar will be diverted to paying bills. We plan to pull out all the stops to get everything paid and be out of debt for good.
Now that it's out, I will continue to post about what we're doing and the plan we're following. Some of you may be familiar already with Dave Ramsey so you already know the plan. Some of you may recognize the plan because it's not new or original - it's a repackage of a general plan for getting out of debt that you've probably heard before.
And please don't make the mistake of thinking I'm asking anyone for anything. We got into this and unless we change our habits, any bailouts will only be a temporary relief. Bailouts will not ever lead to us learning to live within our means. We have tried several bailouts that have only placed us deeper in debt and now we have used up all those options. We need to learn the lesson the hard way now.
3 comments:
Man do I know that feeling! Good luck!!!!
Oh, good luck. We've sunk more into this da*n house than we expected to have to so soon, so finances have been stressing me out lately, too. Argh - my shoulders just tensed right up even typing that. Good for you for stepping up to the plate, acknowledging that there's a problem, and starting to do something about it. Those can be really, really hard first steps. Wishing you the best of luck with it all! Money problems suck.
I can totally relate. I have posted about this information too. It's nice to be able to talk about these issues. We are working hard on getting out of our mess too. It's taken a while, but we're slowly working our way through our mess too.
Budgeting helped us a lot and I took cash for our eating out, grocery and household expenses so we wouldn't over spend. It made me much more aware of what we were spending.
Another way I've been saving tons of money is making our own cleaning supplies. It's also much healthier for our bodies AND the environment. Good luck!
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