Compared to others, our amount of debt is fairly small. I mean, browsing around for other stories, I see people who have close a million dollars in debt! I can't imagine spending that much, borrowing that much, to put you and your whole family in such a predicament. I feel bad enough with our amount! Hubs and I have some rules about what exactly we share. We feel like we don't need to disclose EXACT amounts, but we can and will give general amounts.

Our debt-free journey begins in October. I had known for a while we needed some kind of budget in place so that we could manage our money, and reduce what we're spending. I wasn't happy with exactly how much was going out for fast food, and just plain frivolous spending. We would go to Target and drop $20, $30, $40 in just minutes, on junk! Examples like that are exactly why we sat wondering, "Where did our money go?". I set out to find something I agreed with, and came across Dave Ramsey. I bought a couple of his books for my Kindle, and started reading. I was intrigued, I was enthused, I was hopeful! I read the books with gazelle intensity (something Dave Ramsey talks about), and knew right away that we were going to follow his ways.

We started with November, the week before actually. We sat with our bills, our estimated income, and worked out a zero-based budget. This meant that every single dollar we thought was coming in, had to be given a name. We took care of the easy ones: mortgage, gas for the car, utilities, and food. Then, with the remaining money, filled in the blanks. We added some to clothing, pet food/care, blow (pocket money, free money), gifts (since Christmas was around the corner), and other categories. It was really neat when we filled the categories up and saw that we had money LEFT OVER! Really?! What do we do with?! We played around with our savings, and were able to put a little more into each category (emergency fund to total $1000, retirement, and college for Chubbs). It was incredible to see that we could do this, it was really motivating! And this was such the first step!

The first official baby step is to have an emergency fund of $1000. Many accomplish this by selling everything they can, others already have it in the bank. We had some each month we could apply, we sold some things, and it all worked out! One New Year's Eve we transferred enough to our savings to make our emergency fund $1000.02! How exciting! Just in time for the new year, and a great motivator to keep going!

November and December went well as far as budgeting goes. Each month we set aside our envelopes and filled them with their respectful amount, and that was it. We only that had cash to spend for the month. When it was gone, it was gone until the next month! That's a wake up call in itself, knowing you only have a certain amount to spend. We have really been watching our spending, and it feels really great to start on the second step for the new year!

Part 2 to come!