Well, That One is in the Books....

The end of January is finally here.I really did not think I was going to get through it under budget with an extremely high natural gas bill and going way over my grocery budget. But by some miracle I came in $20.17 under budget --- I sent $10 of that as a "snowflake" to Credit Card 1 this morning. I hadn't planned on the other $10, but Princess Penelope forgot to put that $10 in her gas tank this morning. Whoops.

So, at the end of the month here is where I stand:

Credit Card 1: $1674.56
Credit Card 2: $9031.89
Vet: $119.90

That brings my current debt load to: $10,826.35. That's 4% paid off this month!
It really feels great to SEE a reduction.

So... time to plan out February. The great thing is that its a short month so maybe with 3 less days, I can save a bit more and come in really under budget. Fingers crossed.

How Did I Get Here?

I think that when you are trying to get out of debt, it is important to look at how you got there in the first place. So, with that in mind, this is where I was on January 1:

Credit Card 1: $1980.39
Credit Card 2: $9109.50
Vet: $219.90

Total: $11,309.79

That number is more than a quarter of my gross earned income. GULP. And I know exactly how I got there.... several vacations that I could NOT afford, several Christmases where I went overboard and thought "Oh, I'll pay that right off" and a couple of pet emergencies. Fortunately, my day to day living is not included in those numbers. Neverthless, I've definitely been living far beyond my means, especially when you consider that as of January 2007 I had zero debt.

 It is definitely time for some belt tightening.

Welcome to My World....

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This is my first step. I have kicked around the idea of a blog for, oh, about 14 months now. Nothing like procrastinating. So today, I'm giving this a shot.

I'll start by telling you just a bit about myself and what I'm doing here... I'm a single mom to a fabulous sixteen year old daughter. I work full time outside the home, in addition to being Penelope's full time parent. To complete our little family, we have two pups that we simply adore. Thing 1 is an eleven year old bichon and Thing 2 is a two year old weimaraner.

Our house is constantly chaotic, often messy and always full of immense love. I haven't always made the very best decisions when it comes to our finances which is why at this time I'm carrying a bunch of credit card debt and have very little saved for the home we want to own or for Penelope's college education.

This blog will be an attempt to keep myself accountable to the goals of getting out of debt, getting into our own home and getting Penelope to college....getting us there.

So, I hope you'll stick around as our journey continues.