About US
My wife and I are 32 and basically started this crusade about 7 months ago when I finished school.
In 1998 when my wife graduated we followed her job and lived on her steady income while mine was inconsistent for the first year. I took charge of our finance a year later, budgeting was a matter of necessity, and I’m a bit experience in the art of stretching a dollar. We were ok about living within our means for the most part with the exception that I wouldn’t budget for an item we were looking to buy, we would just pull the cc with enough credit on it then I would increase the weekly payment for that card. This of course would mess up a lot of my budgeting schemes since I was doing this on paper because we didn’t have a computer.

When it came time to make bigger than normal purchases like my studio equipments and TV and such, we would wait for the 0% interest until….. Deals, and then pay if off before the high interest is activated, I call it the reverse lay away. Although I wouldn’t recommend this method for the risk factor, it did work for us in a sense that we had what we wanted on a payment plan and we had the ability and luck to make all the payments without a miss since we always paid off the item before the interest (always 20 plus %) kicked in.

That was our financial life for a while; pay more than minimum payment on the cc’s and keep a couple grand in savings until ING came along then I bumped it to $3000 (back then 2% interest was great). We did this until 2004 when we were able to save some money to buy a house and pay off our credit cards debts to improve our credit scores. And at the same time we decided to make the sacrifice and send me back to school without student loans so we paid out of pocket for my education (an A- is an insulting grade when you make that monthly payment for Tuition). Part of our plan was to move to a location that will allow us to implement this master plan i.e. buy a house , me go back to school out of pocket and live on one income, so it “bye bye” to city life and unaffordable mortgage.
The decision was quite easy actually because
1. we wanted to buy a house that we could afford on one salary
2. I needed to go back to school because I was underpaid and I knew it which made it worse
3. We figured that this was a 4 year sacrifice and we would be able get out of debt shortly after I graduated since we were already living on one salary we would just prolong it for a little while, which is what we’re doing except that I got my degree in 3 years instead of 4
Note: I’m the spender in our relationship, so my spearheading this project (the debt freedom crusade) is easier for us than most because it wasn’t hard to convince my wife.

Current Debts
We started with almost $82k in debt in June 2007
Car 1 $15,969.00
Car 2 $15,000.00
Student Loan $4,920.00
Total $35,889.00


Goals (2008)
• Be debt free but the House by the end of Q3 2008
• Contribute 10% each to our 401 K
• My contribution is actually 6% 401k and 4% Roth 401k with my employer contributing 6% of free money.
• Save for a pick up or SUV for next winter (~$7000 )
• Start saving for some much needed home improvement/renovations, we haven’t done anything but paint since we moved in. when she’d ask me if we could do something for the house I used to say “when I graduate” now it’s “when we get out debt.”


Goals for 2009
• 1 year emergency fund (3 months in ING/ 9months in money market account)
• maximize contribution to 401k’s and Roth 401k
• open a couple of IRAs
• 1 money market account to save for
o Cars
o Motorcycle (will need budget committee approval on that one)
o Solar panel
o Geo-thermo
o And whatever she want to save for
• 1 mutual fund to catch up on retirement ( If we can swing another $1000 that will be great)


Goals for 2010
• As of today: Start paying off the house with a notch down on 2007 aggressiveness
• Tomorrow: start saving for our next house.

That is us “DFC”

now for the physical fitness

i'm on my 3rd week of P90x

and i'm contemplating entering a mini-marathon

We're going to stop our debt snowball to build our emergency fund, because my wife's boss could be made the scapegoat for the company's bad performance in which my wife's job could be in jeopardy. so i'm stopping all additional payments and instead i'll send them to ING.
we figure we'll do this for a little while as we wait out the storm and if all is well I'll pay off the debt accordingly.
Thankfully we don't have any credit cards debt, and the student loan payment mostly goes to principal.

the emergency fund "break" is going well we have about 2 1/2 months worth, so by mid April I should get the snowball rolling again

as of today 3/27, the 3 months EF is in place, I can go back to knocking out debts.

the snowball is on the roll once again

We decided to get back on the snowball and paid off the last of the student loan debt.

the focus now turns to the cars.

Car 1 is out.
last payment will be received tomorrow 7/7/08

we will save $5750 in interest charges.

We're going on vacation next week and when we get back, we'll take on the last mile of the Debt Crusade marathon.

Congratulations. That vacation will feel so much better knowing there's not a car payment waiting for you when you return.

it was indeed a great feeling
going on vacation and paying the vehicles taxes before leaving yet not stressing about it.
I can't wait to be debt free

Awesome! I'm glad you noted how much you saved in interest charges. I'm going to go back and look at how much we saved when we paid off Mr. Sam's MBA loan.

Thanks sam

Fitness

I completed my second round of P90X, and it's still hardcore

Debt:
Paycheck are not coming fast enough.

DFC, about the P90x, are you doing that at home, or do you go to a gym? I'm looking for some type of planned routines, and considering P90x, as I've heard plenty of good things from its adherents.

I did my P90X at the gym, using my Ipod.