How It All Started

How does a newlywed couple get themselves into over $65,0000 worth of debt!?

When Brian and I first met, I carried a bit of credit card debt.  I have always been a hard worker and have worked two jobs since I was 17 years old.  I paid all of my own bills at 15, including a gym membership, car insurance, cell phone, etc. Whatever I wanted, I paid for.  My parents blessed me regularly and I never went without but they firmly believed in teaching me and my 4 other siblings responsibility.  Looking back on it, I'm so grateful they did and I'll be passing that along to my kids too.

Anywho, once I had a credit card, I was able to open up credit cards to all my favorite stores... Express, Victoria's Secret, American Eagle, etc.  Whatever I wanted, I got... just on credit.  I usually had low balances of under $100 on my store cards but my main credit card slowly crept up.  I thought I had a handle on things when tax season came and was one payment away from being credit debt free. And then....

we bought a house in 2009.  We bought a home that was foreclosed on and was vacant for over a year.  There were boards on the windows, mold on the walls, incredibly ugly wallpaper in the kitchen and bathroom, a huge rotted out hole in the kitchen floor... and we bought it, with absolutely NO renovating experience whatsoever.  Naturally, we financed alot of things. Our first plan of action was to take each room at a time and slowly work on renovating each one.  Well once one room looked semi-decent, it made the next one look even worse.  So we went all out and re-did our entire house.  Pictures to follow soon.  Not only did we finance new couches, new bathroom vanities and tubs, etc. but we had to decorate!  I fell into a horrible trap of buy it now and worry about it later.  I sure did have a beautifully decorated house with nice new furniture but with a hefty price tag to it.

That one payment away credit card, soon maxed out at $10,000.  In addition, Brian had a credit card, we had loans through Home Depot, Lowes, our local bank, car loans and now a mortgage. 

I thought we had a handle on our payments but things slowly spiraled out of control. We were drowning in minimum payments.  A came across Dave Ramsey and his Total Money Makeover and finished the book in just a few days.  As soon as I had read the book, I knew our lives would be changed forever.  I scheduled a garage sale and quickly made $1200 in one month.  Soon, we were really seeing the reality of how quickly we could fight our debt.   The story continues.....