Getting Out of Debt..Continued

I just realized that I had not updated on our most recent success! We are forever out of credit card debt, never again will we so unwisely purchase something for which we dont have the money and or can't afford to begin with. We payed off our last payment to our last credit card the last day of April which marks 3 months on our 'get out of debt program'.

To date we have paid over $10,000 off! Yahoo!!! We have over $45,000 in student loans to pay now but we will do it with gazelle intensity. Our next step however is to refinance our home, we are almost done with this. We are refinancing to a better term since interest rates are so low and doing a 15 year fixed.

FYI rule of thumb is that you should never take out more than a 15 year fixed you end up payign sooo much less interest--besides how many of us will be around to pay off a 30 year mortgage anyway? that aside if the payment for a 15 year fixed is more than 25% of your TAKE HOME/NET pay (not how much you actually make) then you are termed 'house poor' and it makes it nearly impossible to get out of debt and to a place of financial peace.

At the same time that we are refinancing our home we are working on looking for a reliable beater car to replace our 2000 ford explorer sport trac. There are soo many reasons why new cars are horrible for your finances I wont even go into it. They are wonderful luxuries WHEN you can afford them and 90% people with new cars cant they just do it because our nation is hell bent on holding it up as the ultimate status symbol. So even though we own our truck outright we are selling it after we find a mechanically sound gas friendly beater and hope to turn a nice profit and pay off a good chunk of student loans.

Other things we have done to make headway to financial peace: be weird, be very weird, because broke is normal in this country and I SURE dont want to be normal--why start now? bought a years worth Lillians clothes, books, toys including christmas at garage sales (do 2 years olds need to know things dont come in boxes? I think not)--she'll be 5 before she figures out 'new' toys come in boxes LOL.
became a pro at paying very little for groceries visit www.thegrocerygame.com
re-balanced my 401k portfolio at work to a good balance of mutual funds
set our bills on auto pay out of our checking account to ensure a balanced budget
advertised a bit more for our side business as every extra dollar counts
sold every CD, DVD, and other luxury laying aroudn our house on ebay (Still in progress) preparing for a garage sale for non-ebay friendly items
re-balanced our W-2 witholdings to ensure we dont get a refund next year (why loan the government money at 0% interest when you could be paying off YOUR bills?
found fun free things to do as a family