Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Debt Countdown

Hubby and I have started the big climb out of debt. Well, not that big, but big enough. Posted on the back of our front door is the Big Honking Debt Number which, thankfully, is less than a yearly salary. ;0)

I'm gathering up tools to help me on this crusade to be debt-free and one of those tools is a blog by Gail Vaz-Oxlade. She's a Canadian finance guru and she could totally kick Suze Orman's butte. Or butt even. (I give up correcting my own spelling sometimes and figure laughing at my misspellings is much more fun.)

Have you ever taken a good hard look at your money and what you spend? I have. Just this week. Since I was handing over the financial reins to hubby I had to pull some knowledge out of my brain and on to paper so I could tell him things like regular withdrawls from the bank account, regular debits to the credit card... etc... But the problem is that it's stored up in random files in my brain.

The credit card statement came in and oh lookie there's a charge to The Biggest Loser Club because I'd forgotten to cancel my 'free except you have to give us your credit card but don't worry, you'll remember to cancel the free' web subscription.

And, oh my, I bought some music online. Luckily I could say it was for the kids (Crazy Frog) and not a the latest Britney Spears album or that Greatest Drum Corps Hits that I almost bought a couple weeks ago. (I iz band gek)

I think the best tool I found was Gail's Interactive Budget Workbook. Fill in all your expenses and it will tell you exactly how much over budget you are. She'll also give you some guidelines for where you should be.... what percentage of your income is going towards housing and what percentage is safe.

So the countdown is on. I think we can do it in about a year.

Of course.. that's if "PLAN #1" works out... more on that in... ten days. I promise. And if Plan #1 doesn't pan out.... we'll be moving on to Plan #2. (Which is not my favourite plan, let's just say that.) Wow, could I BE more cryptic?

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