Enough is enough already!!

I just started to type up a really long and personal post. And then I got to a part that felt familiar. And I realized that I had already written pretty much the exact same post! Ha!

That was over a year ago.

Wanna know how much debt we paid off in the last year?

A little.

Wanna know how much money we saved in the last year?

A little.

AHHHH!

(That's me screaming in frustration, in case you were wondering.)

A part of me is so bugged! WHY am I still doing this? Why haven't I learned my lesson?? Why didn't we end the year with more to show for it? More debt paid off? More savings?

Another part of me is trying to be proud. Proud that although we didn't do the best this year, we absolutely did BETTER! We learned something this last year and made some small changes. And changes are what we are after.

And now it's time to do even better!

I've already posted about all the icky sickies that have been around our house lately. So rather than waste the entire first week of the year sitting around being sick or helping sick kids, I found some useful things to do:

I re-read Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey in a weekend.

I started listening to the Financial Peace University lectures on my iTunes again.

I completely revamped our cash flow plan.

I completely revamped our cash flow plan again.

I squeezed every last drop of money I could from that dang cash flow plan.

:)

Jason and I have had a few really good, really long conversations about money this week, about what we can do, what we're going to do, to be even better this year.

I've run the numbers. And when Jason gets home we're going to run the numbers again. And we're going to make a real commitment to be crazy strict this year and get rid of our debt by the end of the year.

It's going to be reeeeeeeally hard. It's going to take a lot of sacrifice. We had talked about taking the kids to Disneyland this year. And we still could. But we could also take that money and pay off more debt, delay our Disneyland trip by only a few months, and then when we go to Disneyland we can enjoy it DEBT FREE!

Is sacrificing a fun family vacation hard? Yes. But it's possible!! If we educate ourselves, discipline ourselves, and really implement the things we're learning, there is absolutely NO reason we can't do this.

Now I just need someone to teach me how to let go of the things I'm still attached to. Like expensive hair appointments, new clothes for the kids, and my stupid smart phone/data plan. If I can just get myself to let go of some silly STUFF I can shave off even more debt and build savings!