My New Obsession...

...is my finances! Finally I've found a place where my weird obsessive compulsive tendencies will be a positive rather than a negative!
We've started using Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, which basically consists of 5 steps to complete financial awesomeness. If we stick to the system, we will be COMPLETELY out of debt, with $12,000 in savings in TWO FREAKING YEARS!! The thought blows my mind, in a wonderful way.

Step one is saving $1000 for a mini emergency fund. After we get paid on the 1st of the month, we will have that step completed!

Step two is the debt snowball. We start with our smallest debt, which is our car note. We pay the minimum balance on all other debts, and put EVERYTHING extra onto this debt until it's paid off. Then, we move on to the second smallest and so on. This step will take about 18 months for all our debts. Car note, credit card, and student loans..ALL GONE!

The steps after that consist of paying off your house, funding your IRA's, and saving for kids college funds.

I am so excited and focused on this! We've written up a pretty strict budget to allow us to use as much money as possible on the debt snowball, and so far we've been rockstars about sticking to it. We've never had too much trouble with money, always enough to pay the bills and have some fun. But now, we're telling our damn money where to go instead of wondering where it went...and I'm actually surprised at how well we could have been doing if we'd started this sooner.