Tackling My Debt and Budget

Lately I’ve been wanting to get more serious about taking care of debts. If you know me, you know I try to follow many of Dave Ramsey’s principles of budgeting and getting out of debt. I don’t have a whole lot of debt but I am just tired of it and want to get rid of that mess as quickly as possible

If you know much about Dave Ramsey, you know he believes that there is no such thing as good debt. Even credit cards or other things that may “help” your credit score, he advises against. I’m not going to go into detail about all that he suggests, but I will say you can find more information about him and his books/principles at daveramsey.com

Back to what I plan to do to get on track with my debt and budget. I haven’t always been great about budgeting, but in the last year or so I have tried harder than ever to really save for things instead of put them on a credit card or loan. As of right now I have $1300 saved and for me that’s alot! It was technically being saved for a new car but now is going to be an emergency fund while I work on paying off my debts. I also will be using mint.com to keep track of all my accounts as well as everydollar.com (a Dave Ramsey site) to budget and keep track of my goals for paying off debt and saving. First thing is to pay off that debt!

A break down of the debt I want to pay off:

Credit Card: $926
Misc. medical bills: $142
-These are the main two debts I want to focus on for now (I also have a mortgage and small student loans that I plan to tackle next)

My plan:

I plan to use the two websites I mentioned previously to keep me well aware of my budget and debt. For now I have a plan of paying 500.00 each month to pay off my credit card in less that two months. While I’m doing that I will probably go ahead and tackle those relatively small medical bills, just to get them out of the way, Basically I am posting about this to hopefully keep my self on track and motivated.

Other than that I highly suggest you visit everydollar.com if you are in need of a budgeting app or want to get out of debt. The site also lists what they call “Baby Steps” which is Dave Ramsey’s suggested steps to getting out of debt. If you ever need some motivation to get out of debt, just listen to his show or check out his youtube (youtube.com/thedaveramseyshow). You can see tons of videos of people talking about how they used his program and are now debt free. It’s pretty interesting to me and I soon hope to be able to say I am completely debt free! Can you imagine how awesome that would feel? Like literally only having to pay your power bill and your house being paid for would be amazing.

Let me know of ways you keep yourself on track with your budget, or maybe ways you’ve tackled your debt. I’d love to hear your plan or any suggestions!