Almost Seven Months of Making Love, Not Debt - A Retrosepective
Posted on June 26, 2006 by Him and tagged about, debt, festivals, fun, net_worth
It took a lot of badgering to get Her to buy my idea about starting a personal finance blog that deals with money and relationships. Her finally bought it, and on the first day of 2006, we wrote our first post. Ironically, the current majority of posts on this blog are written by Her.
Back then, we were merely beginners in the game of personal finance. We erroneously included our non-wealth building life insurance as a part of our net worth, putting our net worth in the positive. When we realized the error, we truly realized how much work we have to do, not to mention how much we are in the negative.
Since then, about seven months have passed. We've been steadily making our way into the positive net worth, but more importantly, we're steadily getting out of debt. It is easy to see that from the numbers, though. Here's a smattering of things we have also improved upon since we've started this blog:
-- The interest on my credit card debt now ranges from 0% (until April 2007, and will be paid off in September 2006) to 2.99%; a far cry from the 12.99% to 20.99% that I had. For all of our credit card debt, we're paying 5% interest or below.
-- Her dropped the interest rates on her variable interest rate student loans by a few percentage points.
-- We've maximized the use of coupons.
-- We haven't accrued any new debt. Anything that we put on a zero balance credit card is paid off ASAP, and only put on that credit card to reap the rewards. We're still committed to not going into more debt for the wedding.
-- We have both received raises. (hmm, I realized that our income isn't up on the site anymore...we'll have to look into changing that)
-- We've planned to get out of all credit card debt by the time we get married.
-- I sold my car a few months before I started this blog. Now we only have one car that we seldom drive, saving us tons of money of insurance, maintenance, gas, and other automobile related expenses.
-- Most importantly, we've been able to manage our debt so that it is not a barrier to the things we like to do everyday. This past weekend we've enjoyed the first of three summer music festivals, Intonation Music Fest. We're headed to Cirque Shanghai, Ravinia twice, and other Chicago Festivals this summer. By squeezing our budget on most days, we've figured out how to enjoy life and pay off debt. We're only in our 20's once, so we figure we'll enjoy it while we're living in a big city such as Chicago and can physically and mentally tackle everything. We figure that we'll be out of debt by the time we have kids, and then we'll have no time for all of the things that we're doing today.
We've been at this for seven months, and we're exited to see our progress. We can't wait to see what's coming up.
Comments/Trackbacks
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Keep up the great work, I always enjoy reading the site.. My girlfriend and I are also in Chicago, in our 20's and are working on clearing up the debt (or as she likes to call it, my debt) before marriage!
Sue | Jul 8, 2006
I'm really happy for the two of you. When I first starting reading the blog I was blown away by all of the debt, but the real point is to learn from your mistakes and move on with a plan...which is exactly what it sounds like you are doing. It's unfortunate, but I think there is NO finanical education for young adults and then they get bombarded with credit card offers in college. It's truly a disservice that people are not provided with more education in high school before you go out into the world.
Keep up the good job. You may feel resentful when you're friends have so many more "things" but it will be outweighed by your level of discipline and self-confidence of overcoming this obstacle together.
Jill | Jun 26, 2006
Wow! You two are doing so well. To add to your list of accomplishments, you are amusing others and inspiring them to keep up with their financial goals.
Suze Orman may talk about us Young, Fabulous and Broke people in our 20's, but we have good heads on our shoulders.
On our way to financial freedom! Onward, ho! (Not that kind of ho.)
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