One Million and Beyond

Focusing on Debt

By Matt - Thursday, April 30th, 2009

When I started this blog almost two and a half years ago I was in debt and I wanted to make money and live the ‘easy life’. A lot has happened since that time, I’ve gotten married, moved into a new house, changed jobs three times and most importantly had a baby. My life now is different than it was when I started this blog. Unfortunately there are a few things that have not changed, I’m still in debt. My wife and I are still in debt. The good thing is that we’re not drowning in our debt with a mortgage that we can’t afford like a lot of people are. With the arrival of the new one we now know that our lives are forever changed and our lifestyle has to change along with it.

We see our friends who managed to come out of their twenties with little to no debt and with the economic times being tough they’re able to take advantage of the great deals that are out there. Cars selling at huge discounts, houses that are priced reasonably or even purchased at a huge discount. My wife and I got to thinking about our debt and our lives. The reality is that our debt is holding us back. We would be in a great situation if we weren’t carrying any debt. Unfortunately that’s something that we are carrying (along with a wiggly baby from time to time)

The Conclusion

We have decided to focus our efforts on our debt… to some extent, but that is a completely separate post. We are going to start attacking our debt as much as humanly possible; we’re tired of looking at our budgets each month and realizing that we’ve got enough to get bye but only barely. I am now 32 and its time to get rid of the debt.

The Plan

The plan is pretty simple, one debt at a time. My wife and I have kept a significant part of our debts and finances for that matter separate (again this is another post) but we’re going to start budgeting together and tackling our debt together, one credit card and one debt at a time. We are going to start with one of my wife’s credit cards and take it from there. We have both come to the realization that if we were debt free we would be so much better off and now is the time to strive to achieve this.

From personal experience I saw my parents get into debt trouble when I was a teenager and slowly claw their way out around the time I was starting working. I didn’t learn from their mistakes I just managed to repeat them but I did learn one thing (although partially on my own) unless there is a good reason to carry debt it’s a bad thing. By focusing our efforts we’ll be able to get rid of one debt at a time quicker.

Over the past couple months I have been posting very little partially because of being incredibly busy and partially from being in my own little world. Blogging about getting out of debt has helped other bloggers and I think it will help me. I know it will take a little time to find my rhythm but I saw the great strides that Trish from Blogging away debt made and I think its time to focus on my debt before starting to focus on getting the one million that I would like to have.

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