Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Help Yourself Get Out of Debt

When my husband and I first decided to get all of our debt paid off we sat down and made a comprehensive list of all the places we owed money. On this list we made note of the name, the total amount owed, the minimum payment due each month, and the interest rate.

Now while there are several ways to pay off your debts the way we choose to start paying off our debts was to pay off the debt with the lowest balance first. Or the debt snowball as Dave Ramsy calls it.

What helped the most was having all of our debts written out in front of us on one sheet of paper. It gave us a breakdown of all of our payments and amounts owed and we knew exactly were we stood financially.

This is definitely what worked for us at helping us get on a path to becoming debt free. For more works for me Wednesday check out We are That Family.

8 comments:

  1. I LOVE Dave Ramsey! Good for you too..keep it up! :)

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  2. I love DR too! We did this also:)

    I love to hop all over the net to learn new ideas on how to save money.

    We trade or pass on many, many things so that we don't get overwhelmed with "stuff" we no longer use and then we also feel more able to borrow what we need from others when the time comes.

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  3. That's awesome that you've paid off your debt. We are currently working on paying ours off.

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  4. We followed the same principle and are now well on our way to the three-six months income saved. Hard work. We developed a zero balance budget . I did a post on it a week or so ago. Works great to keep the goal and set the reasonable missions to competent

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  5. Hello Sara, I just realized that the Place to Create blog was not linked to my email. I am sorry to have not responded.
    You can sew it is a skill learned some have a natural talent. You just might be both, give it time and feel free to ask for help if I can help you.
    hugs

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  6. I love DR!!
    I am on Step 6..Paying off the Mortgage. I am so glad to have that 6 month EF because right now..the great state of California doesn't have a budget, so I am not getting paid. The 6 month EF is nice to have and keep us going till the state figures out what to do.
    It would be nice if the state could get on the DR plan..LOL

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  7. This is exactly what my husband and I did, and now we are almost completely debt free except for our home! Good for you! It's hard at first, but the relief that comes later makes it all worth it. We decided why not buckle down and be frugal for a year, year and a half? We'll reap the benefits of it for the rest of our lives.

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  8. Well, I bit late though (just 2 years) :P, let me tell you my experience with handling debt. I live with my wife Sara and our kids (Jammy and Rebecca) in Sacramento, CA. Things seemed easier in 2005-06 when we were just married. Within a few months after our marriage (and mostly because of the reckless spendings during our honeymoon), we had assumed lots of debts. Soon we understood that we were in huge trouble (since I was the only earner and making less as had just started my writing career). Thank God Dave was there and his Snowball plan. Eventually, we paid off all the unsecured debts. We are still making regular payments toward our mortgage (which we assumed in 2010) since it is the only debt we are having right now just like Kimberley (and we are happy with it). Moreover, as our kids are far away off the college, we are not thinking about the costs now.

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