About Me (In depth)

Why am I wasting precious time writing this blog?

Here's the deal. I believe the best way for me to hold myself accountable since I cannot find any like minded friends in my real life is to seek out those with similar goals in the virtual world.

On this blog, I intend to share my victories, small and large, but also, my shortcomings and the obstacles on my path. It is my goal to be free of credit card debt - hopefully as soon as Fall 2010.

I am trying to decide about the best timing for beginning my doctorate degree, and while I'm still hashing out the specifics and logistics of that process, I need to be sure that my family is in a place where this will not ruin us.

To lay it all out there, we owe quite a bit on two credit cards. Bummer.

Years ago, when I was a stay at home mom working on my undergraduate degree, I would pour through financial articles from Dave Ramsey to Suze Orman (that's not spelled right, is it?) but more than that, I spent a good deal of time "lurking" on the Family Finances board on babycenter.com. Unfortunately, that site no longer resembles the world which I once stood in awe of and while the fundamentals principles stuck in my head, it was not followed.

Over the last two and a half years, I went to work full time for the first time in my life and worked on my Master's in Education degree simultaneously. I overspent "I deserve it. I work my ass off" and was relatively apathetic if I went over budget (which we did often) "Oh, well, I'll just use my student loans to pay that off."

Boy, was that a smart move. Guess who now owes a small fortune in student loans? Yup. [If you are reading this and have ever thought about doing that, please know that it was most certainly a mistake which I will LITERALLY be paying for for the rest of my life!]

For other bills, currently, we pay way too much for health insurance, and a substantial amount for both children to attend preschool. We have $800 budgeted for all food, clothes, cleaning/toiletry/paper products, gifts, gasoline, car stuff, and so on. While I'm sure it *should* be enough, we are still struggling to make this work. I will be sharing all of my attempts to cut down on these and on our bills on this blog. I very much hope to establish a network for this struggle/process.

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear about your experiences and tips and would be happy to "follow" your blog if you post a link! :)

*Other things you should know: I love commas, parentheses, and ridiculous smiley faces. You have been warned.