6 Month Debt Attrition

Many of you have been walking with me since I started this blog nearly 3 years ago (THREE YEARS AGO!!!), and during that time I have covered lots of different areas of my life. But one theme that has run consistently through this entire blog is my and my husband’s desire to get out of debt and live a debt-free life. When we got married just over 3 years ago, we had nearly $85,000 in debt (combination of student loans, credit card debt, and a car loan).

We are still working towards it, and as my January debt status update reported, we are close! In that report I stated we were down to $16,926 in debt, and now we are down to just over $12,000 (thanks, Uncle Sam, for the tax return!).

Well just a few weeks ago my husband and I sat down to figure out a plan for this last stretch of debt, and we realized that our usual methods were not going to cut it. Not only are we going to be having a baby this year, and all the costs associated with that, but we are going to completely lose my income this year as well. We realized that it would take us almost another full year to get rid of that last $12,000.

And we decided this wasn’t good enough for us.

So we agreed to a 6 month attrition. We have always kept a pretty strict budget, but we have a little fat on there in order to keep life comfortable. We decided that for 6 months we will sacrifice and get rid of all the debt. Like ripping off a band-aid rather than trying to pull it off slowly.

Some of the changes we have implemented for the next 6 months:

1) VERY tight budget with no wiggle room. No more going over. Period.

2) The baby is even on a budget! Including the cloth diapers we are stocking up on (more on that in coming posts).

3) No "entertaining" outside the home. We often have visitors from out-of-state (family and friends), and we find ourselves spending money when they come visit either by eating out or going out to events around town. Not anymore! We have made it clear to everyone that we are strictly entertaining at home these days.

4) For the next 6 months we are only grocery shopping at Aldi. Thank goodness Aldi has really upped their Organic food selection! We have cut our grocery allowance in half. We plan on eating lots of spaghetti (a very budget-friendly meal) in the coming months

5) No more traveling. My husband and I are both from out-of-state, and we usually travel monthly to visit family and friends. We have committed to not traveling anywhere at all again until the debt is gone. This will actually be pretty easy with me not wanting to travel anymore in my 3^rd trimester, not to mention how much more difficult traveling will be with a newborn.

6) Savings from me NOT working. These won’t be very significant actually, but we will be saving a bit on gas.

These on top of the fact that my husband has recently been given the opportunity at work to jump on an extra project should allow us to pay off most if not all the debt by the end of October. Of course, we know that situations can change on a dime, so we are praying for God’s help in this, and cannot wait to be DONE!

And as usual, I will be keeping you updated on the progress.

Have you ever gone into "attrition-mode"? What were some of the trick and tips you liked best to save money and whittle down your debt? 

Do you have debt you'd like to attack over the next 6 months? Join me!