Celebration Elimination

Since February 1st, Patrick and I have been on a rather focused effort to get out of debt. I owe it all to Dave Ramsey...and my parents for introducing me to him. We are following his baby steps and are currently digging our way through baby step #2, which is to pay off all debt except the house (which we don't have). When we sat down to determine to the penny how much debt we were in, the goal seemed huge. Student loans sure do add up. We had to seriously cut our standard of living, which wasn't high to begin with. Anyone who has ventured in our kitchen since February can attest to fact that we have been living off of mostly beans, rice and cornbread.

We have had to be intentional about finding creative ways to stay motivated. Like, we designed our a list of our debt to put on our refrigerator so we could cross things off as we paid them. But it isn't just any list, it has a graphic of someone climbing up a flight of stairs to victory and surrounding by money. Don't make fun. I also have little celebrations with my coworkers by bringing in a treat every time we pay something off so that they can celebrate with us. But, my favorite motivator is what Patrick has creatively named "Celebration Elimination." After each debt we pay off we reward ourselves. Each reward gets bigger we are paying debts off smallest to largest. We paid off our first credit card last month and celebrated by going to see a movie in theaters. What a treat! And, we just paid off our last credit card this week. As you can see, Patrick got to cut up the card and I got to close the account. Our "Celebration Elimination" this time was driving to San Clemente yesterday to the Rainbow Factory store and getting discounted flip flops. Woohoo!

We are $10,000 down and plan to have one of the cars paid off next month!