For me, the road to financial success is much like a diet... I start and I do well for a while, but then I fall off the bandwagon and never look back. *Sigh*

I forgot I even had this journal from last year. I had good intentions at the time, but never got anywhere with my plans. You know what they say - "The road to h*ll is paved with good intentions." It's time to turn those intentions into honest to goodness actions, and that's exactly what I intend to do! (and I am counting on those of you who read this to give me a swift kick in the pants when needed!)

Starting now, I am on a new plan to financial FREEDOM!! I am tired of being young and poor (I'll be 30 this year) and living paycheck to paycheck. It's ridiculous. So, the fun begins!

I am "sort of" doing a $20 challenge, but rather than start with twenty, I am starting with zero (cause I don't have an extra $20, lol!). So far I have posted 2 things on ebay and am waiting on a couple small checks from ebookdrop.com. I also signed up with a ton of survey sites and hope to make small amounts of cash that way. I am working on other ideas to save money/get extra cash as well. Neither my husband or I make much money (so much for those expensive private school college educations!) so the money I save will have to come from me being creative. All the money we make at our wonderful low-paying jobs already goes to bills and CC debt (bad, bad!).

So, welcome to my world! I hope you will follow me on my journey, because I know I will need all the ideas, motivation, and encouragement I can get. I can't wait to be debt free and I hope I can do it soon! We want to buy a house, have kids, get a second car, and do all those other things people our age are doing. But I refuse to do any of that until we make a significant dent in our debt. Ah, how much debt, you ask? Well, since you don't know me and vice versa, I will disclose.

Currently we owe:
- $1200 for hospital bills (didn't have ins at the time)
- About $4300 to CC's (just rolled one balance onto a 0% APR card, yea!)
- $500 to my hubby's boss (who bailed us out because we couldn't pay our vet bill)
- And, because you always have to have a grand finale....get ready for this...$20,000 to my dad, who very graciously lent us the money to help get us out of debt a few years back (even though we were in WAY over our heads and had to declare bankruptcy anyway).

Yes, the B word. Bankruptcy. It makes me sick to my stomach because I've excelled at everything I've ever done in life - got awesome grades, and always made my parents proud. I am a complete goody-goody, by-the-book kinda gal. People IRL (in real life) would be SHOCKED to ever know that I of all people have had a bankruptcy. But, for some reason, I have never been able to live within my means or control my $$. And, even after going through that experience I still managed to rack up another $4300 in CC debt.

But I will say it now, and I will say it LOUDLY and PROUDLY! I will turn this around. I will become a success story. And I WILL make it to financial recovery!

Ok, so now that I've blabbed on and on -- here's the plan. Everything I save for this challenge will go to dad. My goal is to give him $4000 per year for 5 years to wipe out that debt. I am using the snowball method for our CC debt, and making monthly payments (no interest) for the hospital bills and the money we owe hubby's boss. I haven't gotten far ahead enough to figure out how long it will be until we're debt free, but I just want to make it FAST!!!!

I am going to be updating 2 things as I blog:

Current Challenge Savings - $0
Goal is $4000 by the end of the year! Yikes!

Current CC debt - $4322.50
Goal is as soon as humanly possible!

LET THE FUN BEGIN!!!!!!!!!