Early Start on New Year's Resolution

As of December 1, 2009 we decided to start one of our New Year's resolutions early! It is SO important that is why we decided to. And I'm sharing it on the blog because it IS that important and frankly, I need the accountability!

So, you ask, what could be THAT important that we need to start early and post about it? Well, money of course! Specifically, the budgeting of it! We always start out the month so good, often keeping track of money coming in and going out, but then unfortunately we slack! (I always had the same problem with tracking when I was doing Weight Watchers!) And although we are frugal, we still seem to run out of money before the end of the month.

So, what's our plan?

I have been following Money Saving Mom for quite awhile and she and her husband are saving money to buy a HOUSE with cash-insane, right?!? Anyway, they are 75% of the way there, which I know because she does a monthly financial check up at the end of the month. They are following Dave Ramsey's plan in order to do it (someone else we've looked into recently.)

So, our resolution is to do a debt snowball. Which means that money not spent at the end of the month goes towards bills to pay down interest. I'm very proud to say the ONLY debt we have is my school loans, but still, debt IS debt, so we want to pay that off and soon! (Considering I had a goal when I graduated from undergrad to pay off my loans from 5 years of graduating-2006, and instead I went to grad school, thus accumulating more debt!) So, each month, I will be checking in, sharing how much extra (percentage wise only) is going towards reducing my school loans. And since I will be posting how we are doing, I KNOW that we need to do really well in tracking our spending. So, thank you blog readers for being our accountability partners!

So far, 4 days into it, it's going fabulously! We are underspending for ALL of our budgeting categories. 27 more days to go!