MONEY

Today I watched the final episode of Oprah's Debt Diet.  After each of the first 4 episodes, it ended with me getting sort-of excited about getting out of debt.  Today, I am a GAZELLE (read Dave Ramsey's book, Total Money Makeover).  Even though it feels so daunting to look at the spreadsheet I have of our debt because of the extent of it, I know that one day we'll be done with it all!  I have completed our first zero-based budget, where I have assigned every dollar we have coming in this coming month to how it is going to be spent. I've always known that we live paycheck-to-paycheck, something we'll be done doing eventually, and that our budget is very tight, but without this specific budget, I was always just HOPING that at the end of the month we'd still have enough money.  Now I know that for July we should have approximately $130 extra.  Before this new budgeting technique, I never would have imagine we'd have that amount left-over.  What a huge snowball that will go far, very fast!

I'm also trying to add to our income a little bit at a time.  For example, I just recently sold a few books on cash4books.net.  Not much $ there, but today they bought a book that they didn't buy yesterday. Always trying to get rid of more of our stuff.  I've been completing surveys online at opinionoutpost.com.  Just today I requested my check of $12. I received a $10 rebate check from Kraft Foods.  I will receive a $5 rebate and $15 in giftcards to Rite-Aid.  Now to make craigslist my friend and get rid of everything we don't need. 

Slowly but surely this will all add up.

I am also going to re-read

to further intensify my heart for getting out of debt!