Mind if I join in? I'm a little late to the party but I need some help with focus and after reading through this thread I think it might be just the thing!
Debt is a rather new thing in our lives. For a long time we were cash only and our house is paid off but the last year threw some chaos our way and I need to get it under control. I transferred to university in the fall to finish my degree, which is something I've always wanted to do but unfortunately means taking out some student loans. My loans won't start repayment until June 2017 and they're about half subsidized but I'd like to pay down the balance some before then since my career path after graduation is unclear right now. We also have two girls in private school so I treat their tuition for the year as a debt account until it is paid off, which we usually try to do by Oct or Nov in preparation for that seasonal downturn but we're nowhere near on pace to do that this year. And DH just closed his business for the second time - he closed during the worst of the recession, took a job that ended in a layoff after less than a year, and started up again - but not before we burned through the majority of our liquid savings and ran up a small amount of credit card debt surviving a long winter slow season. It doesn't add up to a huge sum, but it is more debt than I'm comfortable carrying and I don't like the way monthly payments eat into our 'fun' money.
On the plus side, the decision to close the business was precipitated not only by the lack of solid bookings and problems with DH's partner but also by a job offer that was just the right opportunity to make DH willing to give up on self-employment with no regrets. He's now in maintenance for a major manufacturing company, doing general handyman work for an hourly wage that is comparable to what he made in his best years on his own (those years being a rather distant memory now - before the housing crisis hit). So we will have the income to handle our debt easily if we can exercise a bit of self-control and attack them with a good plan.
I'm still working on the details of that plan. What I'm trying to do is strike a balance between paying things off quickly and enjoying the summer outings and birthday celebrations that are among our most cherished family traditions. I'll say this up front - I'm no Dave Ramsey follower and we won't be sitting at home eating beans and rice through this process. I've tried that method and I know that for us it is about as successful as a grapefruit diet - it might be effective while it lasts but it makes us all cranky and ends with falling off the wagon in a big way! So I'm going to be focusing on the little things, packing lunches and making coffee for DH in the mornings, breaking my habit of stopping at the gas station for a fountain Coke in the mornings (why does it taste so much better from the fountain than from a bottle?!?), keeping a tighter eye on my grocery spending, and planning meals to avoid the convenience trap of ordering take-out food that we don't even particularly like (ie McDonalds or Hungry Howies). And at times I'm sure to be making some spending choices that are somewhat counter-productive, like traveling or working on our home while we're still in the repayment stage, though I'm committed to no new debt other than my student loans while I'm working the plan. But I'm counting on self-control in the little things along with the simple math of a higher and more dependable income to make continuous progress without taking frugality to the extreme.
My priorities are - credit cards first ($4577 across 4 cards), then property taxes ($1106), then the girls' tuition ($8495), then my student loans (approx $15K by the time I finish). That's not quite a snowball approach nor is it a precise alignment according to interest rate, but it does attack the highest rate debt first, then the annual commitments, followed by the long-term debt.
. Radiation is awful, I'm glad you've found the silver lining in it all!
