Hi all, 31yo Norwegian male here.

I've struggled with financial ignorance for a few years, but things finally started changing last year.
I managed to shave off $10,000 during 2008, and this year should prove even better.
I have three lines of debt/credit
Student loan: $30,000 @ ~6% APR
Car/motorbikes loan: $9,300 @ 11% APR
CC: $13,600 @ unknown rate (In total: $52,900


Monthly income after taxes:
$3,200


I'm not going into a detailed description of my monthly expenses apart from the debt (well, maybe if it seems necessary)
Monthly payments:
Student loan: $315 (minimum is 238)
Car/motorbikes loan: $685 (which is minimum)
CC: $430 (at current balance minimum is a healthy $330)
Total monthly debt expenses: $1,430

My goals are as follows:
Eliminate Car/motorbikes loan by December 2009 (two months early w/help from tax return and other windfall).
Eliminate CC by end of 2010
Eliminate Student loan by no later than 2015 (the issuers payment plan suggests finalizing in august 2028, with the current payments I'm already looking at paying it nine years early).

I get a lump sum once a year of 12% my annual groce (sp?) income, which will be split between debt and savings.
I also hope to get a tax refund, although that can swing both ways.

Like I said briefly, I already am paying more than suggested on the student loan, saving me nine years running time (and $13,000 in interest!).
The plan is however to keep spending the same total amount on debt payments, which would allow me to chunk in a monthly $1,430 in 2011.
That should speed things up a bit

When one debt is gone, that amount goes to the next debt.

All payments are automatic, and I have a savings account (@6% APR) which also gets its automatic $150 a month (not much, I know).
In addition I have automatic transfers from checking account to a "periodic bill" account at the same amount as my savings.
I have no EF (if you don't count my parents, haha).
All other periodic expenses are auto as well, car/bike insurance etc.

All of this does not leave me with much at the end of the month, but I do not have many expenses (rent would be no.1 at 500).
The job pays for DSL and cell, I do not have a TV, and I'm single (my ex was frugal, but not with my money. Bet she has savings from living with me).


A few principals I follow, and have for a while:
No new debt until I buy my own home.
No more personal CC's (I have a company CC for travel expenses).
I will not touch my savings.

Thanks for reading, I do realize my post is a mess and you may not feel the wiser when you get down here
Putting all this in writing for you all to see is a big psychological boost for my frugality, though.

ETA for my own sake, $1=7NOK (ignore this, it's just to make sure I use the same exchange rate consistently through the thread)

Forgot to mention this, but the high level of automation in my finances comes partly from the book "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach.
There's usually maybe one bill every two months that I manually have to pay (online, of course).
The rest is auto
The monthly payments to the student loan is a convenience measure I had to arrange myself through my online bank, as the plan only provides quarterly payments (which were always too large for me to handle).
Same with insurance, by default they have one yearly payment.

And now that I've had lunch, I can tell you one little thing I do to please the gods of frugality:
I cook my food on the same wood stove that I use for heating the entire house.
Today is plenty cold (14F) for this old house (1917), but I use practically no electric heat.

You may have noticed the lack of goal for financial security beyond being free of debt?
I dare not set a savings goal for myself just yet, but I welcome any and all suggestions on how to progress with that part

I have one vice (well, one in specific) that I should rid myself of now that I'm set on fixing my finances,
and that's tobacco Not the smoking kind, but a kind of chewing tobacco.
It's $150 a month that I could put into the periodic bill account or savings. Think I'm going for the bill-savings.
Puttin' the money where my mouth is, ehehe.
I'll set the new and improved amount right now, and do some mental calculating in complete solitude with a cup of camomile tea.

That was my most obvious "latte-factor"
Wonder what others I might have?

Tobacco has been a hard one to let go for me. I smoke about 1.5 packs a week... and I have been really really trying to cut back / quit. My expense is only $40 or so a month... but still...

Its the healthiest way to save money I guess...but, I feel you on that one. its a vice thats for sure.

I guess it's easier if you reach a certain level of desperation, like me

Tomorrow is gonna be an expensive day, with both a visit to the dentists and a refuel for the car.
Together it should be around $250.
(Edited: It actually turned out to be $100 for gas and $224 at the dentists)

I do not have a lot of money left in my account right now (~400), and with payday two weeks away I'd usually just say "fkit, it's no point trying to break even, I'll spend it all asap".
I'm hellbent on not only breaking even this month, but actually have a tiny bit left come payday.

I went grocery shopping today. I stuck to my shopping list,
and even though the total was $50, I know it's gonna last me a while. In the $50, there's 14lbs of meat, plus other stuff.
If I don't have to go shopping again until maybe next Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll be happy.

Stopping by to pep myself, even though I'm doing fine.
Quitting tobacco has been a breeze so far, I did quit last Sunday when posting about it.
I simply cannot afford it, yet I have always granted myself the luxury of nicotine.
I've wasted A LOT of money on the habit.

Since going to the dentists on Wednesday, I have not used my (debit) card for anything.
In fact, it stays at home until I need to do grocery shopping again.
The only money I've spent since then is $5 for coffee last night, when I met up with my cousin.
I brought $5 in cash from my piggy bank.
I think I'm sick, I totally regretted "wasting" the $5 when I should have saved it
(to make up for it, I once again cooked dinner on the fireplace today)

I have decided to try and save up a little extra, as the car needs a little maintenance soon.
(oil change, parking brake needs fixing)
I'll get by with paying for the parts and doing the work myself.

This whole getting out of debt is a waiting game, I wish it could be a little quicker.
But I can't complain, I'm doing fine. I'm not hungry or tired. I sleep well because I have a plan.

Tomorrow I'm going grocery shopping again.
Last time was Tuesday 6th.
Ten days without even entering a grocery store! Before, I went at least every other day (and I never used a list).
This will surely save me some money, together with that tobacco thing (I'm still off tobacco and doing fine).

My fiscal month goes from the 22nd to the 22nd. I didn't really go frugal until after Christmas in this fiscal month,
so the next one is going to be very interesting with regards to how little I'm gonna spend throughout it.
Can't wait to find out
I think I like this game!

This really sums up my experience, too. I can't say how many times I have been happy to have a plan that is affording steady improvement. But it is painfully slow.

Ah, heck, two slight setbacks:
Electricity bill came (for the last quarter of 2008), $550
And a late (from Christmas) VISA cab-charge ($65) made my checking account go red numbered on me until I noticed and transferred enough to keep it the right color.

A digression, or maybe not: by quitting tobacco, I save about the same amount monthly that electricity costs me.

The electricity bill changes my setup for this paycheck (which I hope to get on Thursday).
I was trying to set aside some money for car parts and a big annual bill ($850) that's due in March.
Worst part is that it's due a few days before my March paycheck, so I only have this and the next paycheck to get the money together.
Oh well, I'm sure everything will be fine

I'll update when I've gotten my paycheck and paid my bills (I'm expecting more of them).
February will be VERY cheap

I've come to a conclusion; I need a large buffer.
And I don't mean EF, as the buffer would be used a few times through the year.
At the moment, I do have a little more than $1000 between my miniscule savings and the account for larger bills.
In Norway, $1000 doesn't cover much, so I think I'll need at least double or triple that.
What I'll do is keep putting in a token amount towards my savings account, like $50 a month or so.
At the same time I'll transfer what is left of the paycheck in the end of the (fiscal) month to my buffer/bill account.

I'm quite pleased that I paid the electricity bill, and my budget is still in working order.
If everything goes according to my plan, I'll even have a tiny positive balance when I get my next paycheck.
And that, my friends, is nothing short of incredible. The former me would have to use his CC to buy groceries after paying such a large bill from the checking account.

Tomorrow - and I know how boring it must be to hear this over and over - I'm going grocery shopping.
That's right, I haven't done that since the 16th! I'll do the math for you, it's 14 days!
Using the shopping list totally works for my budget! I almost never shop, but I certainly don't starve.
It's probably the single most money-saving-action I've implemented.
All other spending is suspended (clothes, alcohol, tobacco, junk food/candy/soda), and that helps as well.

Thanks for reading

Sounds like you're doing great!

Norway is pretty expensive (living in Stavanger for a couple of months now), but if you pay attention to what you buy (especially groceries), it's not all that bad. Don't drink to much alcohol though...

I don't drink alcohol at all, unless it's free

Yeah, I think I'll be fine.
Over the course of 2009 I'll pay a minimum of $17,160 towards debt, and it's kind of a lot.
I did pay approximately the same last year as well, but I gave with one hand and took it back with the other (which was holding the CC).


My current accurate numbers are
$8,229 - Car loan
$13,406 - CC
$28,732 - SL

$50,368.14 - Total

The numbers in the first post were not completely accurate, and I've done the first monthly payments on the debts.
Perhaps I'll update the numbers around this time each month, even though I'll be quite predictable with the same payments every time.

Hi again, I've looked over my spending for the present fiscal month (Jan.22 - Feb.22).

1 418 - Debts
550 - Electricity bill
500 - Rent
286 - Gas for car
199 - Groceries
133 - Insurance
52 - VAT on a purchase made last year

(really, this is it, there are no more posts in this months budget)

In addition, I transferred $225 (in total) to "large bill" account and savings account.

All this, plus banking fees of $8.71 makes a total of $3372, a little more than anticipated (and a little more than my last paycheck).
Still a positive balance in the account though
Paying almost 50% of my disposable income towards debt is hard, but I had it coming.
It's my own fault, I'm afraid.
Had it not been for the $550 bill, I'd have coped a lot better.
But it does show me that months with only "fixed" expenses would leave me with $500 at the end of the month though, and that's cool.

I worked a little overtime last month, and even more this month, which gives me some leeway in the following two fiscal months.

I'm stunned I don't spend more on groceries
Anyways, next payday is about a week away.
I'll update the figures when I've made monthly payments.

End of February numbers:
$7,627 - Car loan
$13,098 - CC
$28,428 - SL

$49,153 - Total
Progress since last month: $1,215
Progress since Jan-09: $1,215

I'll be getting more money (in excess of the recommended EF for the indebted) on my next paycheck than what I'm used to,
but I'll be using - or rather, NOT using - that money as a buffer against car maintenance, utility bills and such.
I don't feel like $1,215 of shrinkage is enough, and I'm contemplating paying an extra 500 towards the CC.
I'm not comfortable with my lack of non-allocated spare cash, though, so I might just wait a while.

As for allocated cash reserve, I've managed to set aside the cash needed for that large bill in March, woohoo.
I'll even leave a couple hundred when the bill is paid

End of March numbers:
$7,016 - Car loan
$12,598 - CC
$28,428 - SL (their site is quite slow updating, so I don't know the exact amount. I DID pay them, though, LOL)

$48,042 - Total
Progress last month: $1,111 (note that SL remainder is not updated )
Progress since Jan-09: $2,326

The numbers are not so impressive, but this month gives me a big psychological boost for several reasons:
Car loan dips under 50k NOK, woohoo!
CC dips under 90k NOK, woohoo! (for the first time in more than a year, I now have a five digit amount available on the card. Ain't gonna use any of it though).
SL dips under 200k NOK, woohoo!

I decided to pay $714 towards the CC, which is more than double what they "asked".
Of all the other good reasons to pay that much, this is the most important to me: it keeps the available amount above five digits even with next month's finance charges.
The owed amount will never again be above 90k to those a**hol*s that gave me that insanely large limit on the card!
I already notice a difference in the finance charges on the CC, which have been very large for a long time (I paid $5,000 in FC on that card alone last year).

Also when I visited the SL site online, I changed from a variable interest (ATM 6%) to a fixed rate of 3,5% (three-year contract, after which it goes back to variable rate).
So during the next three years the extra payments I'm making will make more of an impact on the principal.

Wish there was some way of doing the same with the CC, but unfortunately we don't have all the options that you have in the US (balance transfer, etc).

Allright, now to the goals I made in my first post:
Eliminate car loan by Dec 2009,
eliminate CC by end of 2010,
eliminate SL by no later than 2015.
I can safely state that I will reach my goals. Almost.
I will rearrange them a bit, however.

Playing with different calculators convinced me of the enormous benefits of going after CC-debt.
I'll do the car loan according to the plan, and pay it down by March next year.
I have no problems with that, I set it up with large payments from the get-go anyway (it's nearly $700 a month).
This gives me the opportunity to throw windfalls and extra cash at the CC,
saving me loads of money in the future
Deep down I hope to have the CC eliminated by next summer.
I'll sacrifice the mental boost of paying down the smallest debt quicker, and go after the high-interest debt instead.

Having a plan is great! I don't feel smothered by my own finances anymore, I'm in control

PS: Post written while listening to Engelbert Humperdincks rendition of My Way, beautiful voice for that song.