Caro's Personal Finance Blog

I watched my spending and took an extra 7 hours on my p/t job. I am planning on paying a credit card off on Friday and then I will start working on the next card. It is very nice to notice some progress.
I need to work on the instant gratification issues I have. I want to get out of debt right now, the same way that I got into debt. Those cards are so easy, just type in a few numbers and voila a nice shiny something gets delivered to your door. I guess most things are like that.

I had a great New Years, my parents came out to visit for the long weekend and we had a great time. I was amazed at how fast the weekend went even with having the extra day off on Monday. I'm lucky that I'm able to telecommute with my 2nd job and I only had to work one shift while they were here.

My goals this week are to stick to my budget with absolutely no IMPULSE buying.

This is my first blog. I've wanted to start one but just never took the time. I decided to start the year off right and use this forum to try and keep myself focused on cutting out the debt in my life.
A little background on me, I moved from Philadelphia to Nashville for my job, just about 2 years ago and after a year I decided to buy a house. I had most of my debt cleared out except for my car and a very small amount of cc debt. Once I closed on my loan and moved in I found I "needed" a lot, I'm saying "needed" but of course it was really "wanted". I controlled myself for about a month and a half, but after living for several years very frugally, I went nuts hence the following debt breakdown.

Mortgage = 109,910.14
Car Loan = 17,429.56
Loan 1 = 12,465.04
CC debt = 8266.65
Loan 2 = 4449.85

Total = $152,521.24

Seeing this in writing makes it seem much more real, I seem to have allowed myself the luxury of managing my money (if you can call this fiasco managing) in a haze. How I could rack up that much debt in that small amount of time amazes me. I am determined to dig myself out of this hole and back to a much saner lifestyle.
I've started my emergency fund and created a budget so I feel that I am at least on the right track.

I took an extra part time job in Oct in order to get the debt paid off faster and I had already paid a few small cards off using the snowball method. My plan is to use that same method to pay of the remaining cc debt and then move on to the 2 personal loans. Finally addressing the car note and the mortgage.

I'm going to continue to read the other blogs for inspiration and keep plugging away.