Debt

You aren't alone.  You are very wise to want to get out of debt at ANY point in your life.  I would suggest you join the Dave Ramsey Fans group here on CM.  You can also pick up his book The Total Money Makeover at your library and start there.  He's got a down to earth, WORKABLE plan to get out of debt and build your wealth, no matter what your income level is.  We used it and have no debt now except what we owe on our home.

Ditto on this PP. We have just our van left and the house. We will be out by the end of 2009. I highly recommend TMM or FPU. Its great. Its life changing!

So, the other two gals have it right - Dave Ramsey is the way to go!  We no longer have any credit card debt, but we used to have a lot of it.  Well....that an auto loans and student loans.  We have paid off $43,545 of our debt in a little over 3 years (while paying for having 3 kids) on our $30,000 - $31,000/year income.  We aren't debt free yet - we still have about 27,000 in student loans to pay off, but we should be done with those in the next year.  Then we'll get a 3-6 month's worth of expenses in an emergency fund, start saving for retirement and kids' college, and then we'll work on paying off our house early.  Dave has a really fantastic plan on how to get out of debt.  It's the best one I've found - and believe me, I've looked! 

So, definitely check out Dave.  You can go to the Dave Ramsey Fans group on here (I'm an admin of that group too, so I'm there ALL the time), and definitely check out his website www.daveramsey.com - from 1-4 Central Time, you can listen to his talk radio show for free by clicking "listen now" in the top right corner.  You can also listen to the archives.  He's VERY entertaining and actually makes you feel like you CAN beat debt and live a life without any form of debt.  We haven't had a credit card in years, and we're very happy without one.  When we started, we took ours and had a plastectomy and cut those suckers up.  It was so much fun, and I saved the scraps of the cards to make a frame or something for our "We're Debt FREE!!!" picture.  :o)

Holy Schmoly!!  I gotta get that book and get on the group!!

Heck if you paid $43,000 I'm sure we can pay $8000!!!

I wish Dh wasn't self employed because that would help a ton :(

DH and I got out of debt, except for the house, using Dave Ramsey's plan. I highly recommend it.

We don't have any credit card debt. But I am pretty stressed. My hours were cut from 16 a week to 8. Not much, but it cut our extra income by half. So now we are barely making ends meet. We have dhs car and the house as debt. I know that we can do this on one income. The question is, do I want to cut out the extras that we have grown used to (lazy on) for the last six years? Wish me luck. Looking into Dave's Plan.

Quoting SusieD250:

We don't have any credit card debt. But I am pretty stressed. My hours were cut from 16 a week to 8. Not much, but it cut our extra income by half. So now we are barely making ends meet. We have dhs car and the house as debt. I know that we can do this on one income. The question is, do I want to cut out the extras that we have grown used to (lazy on) for the last six years? Wish me luck. Looking into Dave's Plan.

We've been without cable TV for a long time, and it did take a little getting used to but we don't mind it any more.  Some gals I know have gotten the converter box and a digital antenna and have amazing picture quality and they pick up more channels then they even knew they could.  We had to buy a new TV (old one died on us), so we have a digital one and do not need the converter box.  We have a digital antenna (cost us $20-30 at Walmart) and the picture quality is fantastic.  We have about 10 channels we didn't even know were out there, and we even have one called Qubo and it's 24 hour cartoons for the kids! 

When we cut out cable and then when we cut out Netflix, we started to spend more time together as a family, which is a very nice benefit from "doing without" the conveniences of life.  :o) 

I just joined the Dave Ramsey group so hopefully I can get started on getting debt free!

Quoting MrsFizz007:

I just joined the Dave Ramsey group so hopefully I can get started on getting debt free!

I'll see ya there!  :o)  There's an hour left in his show if you want to check him out.  www.daveramsey.com - click listen now in top right corner.