We did it! We sat down and made a solid financial plan that extends into 2010. Besides dh's student loan which we won't have to start paying back until 2011 since Dh is going back to school-again- to get his Administrators license, we have approx $30k in consumer debt(including cars, our timeshare, everything) so we made out a very realistic plan that gets $10k of it paid off by the end of this year! Then we should still be able to get the other $20k paid off in 2010.
We had already agreed that a certain part of the debt had to be eliminated before we could even think of me becoming a stay at home mom. If we really kick ass, we could probably do it by this september. But since we have finally decided that we are for sure going to try to have another baby in the spring of 2010, I'll probably continue working through the pregnancy just to keep my insurance.
In addition, Dh can take the test for his administrators license anytime after he starts taking the classes. We don't know if he'd be able to pass the test this spring, but he definitely should be close enough to finishing to pass by spring 2010 which mean he would most likely be an Assistant Principal starting fall 2010. That would have him making almost $15k more than what we are making together right now.
 
And by then we will have next to no debt!
That also doesn't take into account the fact that we are going to pursue a settlement from the resort where I broke my ankle. Unfortunately we have to sue them because they are "self insured" and I don't know how long it would take to get a settlement out of that, but if they settle quickly, we could even have it all paid off by the end of the year!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You KNOW I'm a fan of having a solid financial plan so
 
for you guys!!

Keep us posted on how things progress!!
 

Good for you. I really need to get something like that going but everytime we get a plan something happens and it goes straight out the window
 

That's why I put it down on paper...we have paid off the credit cards completely at least once every year! But then somethign happens and dh pulls them out again. Now that it is down on paper and he sees what we have to do to make all of our plans work, he is
 
going to stick to it better. We are also going to start cancelling cards as we pay them off. I know it can negatively affect your credit score to close them, but obviously we (he) can't be trusted with them, so away they go!

We stopped using credit cards about 5 years ago because we also couldn't be trusted. It took us 2.5 years to get totally out of debt but now it's the best thing that we could have done for our financial future.

Building our emergency fund will protect us from having to worry about how to pay for a broken water heater, new tires, or any other emergency that comes up.
 


I'm excited to get to that point and we shouldn't have a problem adding that $10,000 this year. We added $525 in the last few days so we should be able to reach that goal easily, even with private school tuition, a new baby, and ekeing out a vacation this summer.