Goals Revisited....

I admit, I made those goals below on a whim.

They are mostly fine, except #2- Instead of this, we decided to seriously sit down and look at our budget.

We discovered we have about $3200 each month left over after paying bills, so every single penny of this for now will be going to pay off our debts.

1st. Jeremy's credit cards
2nd. Jeremy's student loans
3rd. My Car

*** we do plan to take a cruise in October for our 1 year anniversary :-)

We estimate that we can be debt free by about June of next year, if not earlier! :-)

So- this means several things:

1. We will be living very frugal over the next year (and we are ok with that)
2. This will only fuel my coupon clipping, sale section reading even more!
3. Our house projects will have to wait. We could easily put those new hardwoods on a credit card, but that's kinda backpedaling, now isn't it?

After those debts are gone we'll start doing a few things:

1. We will start contributing to IRAs ( I have one open right now, that my employer is socking 5% of my income into, Jeremy doesn't have one)
2. We'll most likely start paying extra on our mortgage (like a lot, like 2k more a month!)
3. We *might* start trying to have a baby..... eek!

If you are in the mode to get out of debt and see some light at the end of the tunnel, I highly recomend reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. It's just practical. Definitely not a 'get out of debt quick' scheme... just good advice for those of us who need a place to start.