Every (couple) day(s) we're hustlin'!

We realize that cutting back on spending is going to help a lot but it's not going to be enough to get us out of this mess in the amount of time we'd like to. We need more income and a whole lot of organization. According to a lot of other peoples' blogs and stories, we've actually been doing what most of them did in the beginning. So here's our plan of attack:

First, we listed out all of our debt. Every last drop. We took a good hard look at it because it's real and it's not just numbers. It's what's holding us back from our financial freedom. It's what makes us worry about our future, stresses us out, causes arguments and even gives us nightmares. Joe actually took a short walk after we did this to clear his mind. This part may have been one of the hardest parts of our last two weeks.

We decided that we would stop feeling embarrassed and ashamed about it because it's not helpful to us. We've not throwing a big Debt Announcement party and inviting all our friends, but we need to start being honest with ourselves. No more denying it or playing "out of sight out of mind" tricks. Luckily our friends who do know our little debt secret are very understanding. Most of them don't want to go out all the time so we're lucky there. If you do have friends that require going out every weekend, don't be afraid to decline sometimes and let them know you're saving or watching your expenses. Maybe invite them over to hang out, have some drinks, play or watch games, etc. It's so much cheaper that way.

We decided on a budget for the month of June and we'll try our damnedest to stick with it. We know that it's our first month of planning and we may realize that we may have over- or under-budgeted in some categories but we'll learn what's best for us in time. No spreadsheet yet, but we use Evernote religiously and have found that to be useful. Here's what our June budget looks like halfway through the month:

Looking at it I can already see where I can cut back for future months or at least spend wiser. The $10 bracelets were nice and made for a cute Instagram photo but they're totally going to be one of those purchases I shove in a memory box for a decade or two. I broke the groceries down into weeks and color coded. Our Aldi experiment left us fairly unsatisfied for Week 1. I want to note that only $88.77 of that Costco bill was food / water, which will last for two weeks for sure with meal prepping and freezing the extra. That averages to $44.39 per week. $8.99 of that could have been saved if I didn't give into my sweet tooth and buy dark chocolate salted caramels IN BULK. Bad move for my budget and diet on that one. The rest was cat litter and cat food, contact solution and things that are going to last for about a month or more. Overall it seems like we did pretty well with groceries. Prior to Decision Day, we would never have paid attention to prices or what's on sale and be shocked at the register.

We cancelled subscriptions to unnecessary services. This is very subjective for everyone, I think. Some people cancel everything. Some people cancel stuff they can totally live without but keep the super convenient stuff. We decided to cancel just about everything except our Evernote subscription ($5/mo). This allows us to share unlimited notebooks and we use it constantly and it's become a crucial part of organizing our life. We felt like that is the one subscription we'd rather not do without. Personally I cancelled two subscriptions to Twitch channels that I had honestly forgotten about ($4.99/mo each). I cancelled Spotify Premium ($9.99/mo). I can still use the app on all of my mobile devices and I can deal with the commercials and the few limits they give you for playing your playlists on mobile devices.

We started selling our crap. After our first week of doing this, we made $120 off our crap! $25 for a projector we collected somewhere that needed a bulb, $75 for my previous car's OEM radio / CD player that I kept, and $20 for a heavy plastic lounge chair donated to us by Joe's parents. Considering the fact that I've sold things online full time at work for going on 4 years now, you'd think I would have done this much sooner for us. I've sold some things here and there but I honestly haven't made that much of an effort. I've always used the excuse that I did it for 8 hours at work and I don't want to come home and do it even more. But I spent that 8 hours making someone else a lot of money and earning myself an hourly wage. One month last year we made close to $1k because his parents gave us some exercise equipment they wanted gone ASAP, but we honestly didn't put the money where it should have gone (to the debt). I am very careful what I list on eBay due to the amount of scamming buyers these days, but I list just about everything on Craigslist and OfferUp. I've also joined a Facebook group for Columbus and there's the r/columbusclassifieds sub-Reddit for large things worthwhile.

After all the preparing and planning, we realized we had to make a choice of which loan or credit card we wanted to take out first. Originally I thought I would pay off all of my debt since it was so little in comparison, then start banging away at Joe's. Then I took a look at my interest rates. They are all incredibly low compared to his. Joe's Microcenter card has an interest rate of 27.99%. My stomach turned when I first saw that. Mom said that store cards will get you that way - you get a nice "deal" on that large purchase you're making, but they neglect to emphasize the interest rate to you when signing you up for that card. The balance is only $746.58 and we decided that it had to be the first to go. His Fifth Third Mastercard has an interest rate of 23.99% and with a balance of over $8k we thought we'd go after that one next. I know it sounds like an awful idea to pay off a credit card with a credit card, but we may look around for an offer from a trusted credit card company or bank that promises 0% interest for 12-18 months (whatever the special is) and see if we can do a FREE balance transfer or pay it off with the new card. That will give us some time of no interest to chip away at the balance. After that, we decided we'd like to go for the highest student loan with the highest interest rate and use the Avalanche method for destroying the rest.

We've got so many ideas for the future for both saving money and earning extra money. It's kind of thrilling, really. The idea of chipping away at it all and each loan that gets paid off, trickling those payments down the mountain of debt. The day that we say good-bye to Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) will be such a wonderful day. Maybe even the best day.