Step # 1 - Face the Music

I have been keeping a calender, where any day I spend money I put it there. I add it up daily then weekly then the month.This way I can see what really needs/can be cut out. I already bring lunch, don't eat out or have cable, drink soda or do much entertainment. I cut gift cost to $15 from $25, so keep the ideas coming. I would love to attack like you have :-)

This comment from a recent post got me thinking that I ought to run through the steps, in detail, we took to pay off our unsecured debt. As regular readers know, Mr. Sam and I paid off all our unsecured debt, which totaled $55,500, in twelve and a half months back in 2007.

So here goes. Step # 1 on this journey to freedom from debt was to "face the music" and figure out how much debt we had. This sounds like an easy step, but it probably was the second most difficult step in our debt plan.

Background, Mr. Sam and I were married in late 2006. While we were living together and our finances were some what intermingled he was responsible for his debt and I was responsible for mine. We had a joint account for shared expenses and we each contributed to our joint account based on how much we each earned. I contributed more to our joint expenses, because I earned more. I was responsible for paying all our joint expenses and my own expenses. Mr. Sam was on his own.

So when we decided to tackle our debt as a 2007 New Year's Resolution, in order to do so we had to gather up the actual paperwork and sit down and chart it out. As of January 1, 2007, we had six debts, I had one credit card debt, Mr. Sam had three credit card debts, one other debt, and one student loan. The student loan debt was about $27,000 and about half our total debt.