You Know You're Jealous

Most of you know that Patrick and I are still on Dave Ramsey's plan to get out of debt. We are about a year away from being completely debt free. I can't wait for that glorious day. In the meantime, we are celebrating smaller victories. For every $10,000 we pay off, we reward ourselves; we named this tradition "Celebration Elimination."

Well, as soon as our tax return gets here, we will hit the first $10,000 mark for the 2010 calendar year. Woohoo! We decided to cheat a little and celebrate while we wait on the tax refund to get here. We just couldn't resist the opportunity to celebrate at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells....just 2 hours away. We couldn't believe when we heard that all of The Greats in tennis history were going to be on the court at the same time for a charity match to help Haiti. So...we got courtside tickets to the event and to Indian Wells we went.



The gates opened at 4:30pm and we had plenty of time to visit the outside courts. We got to watch Maria Sharapova's match...and then a ton of people I don't know. We had time to grab some dinner and then it was time to head to center court. The line-up for the ladies was Lindsay Davenport and Stephanie Graf vs. Martina Navratilova and Justine Henin. I must mention that because it was a charity match, they had a mic on all of the players. It was so much fun getting to see their personalities during the match...not to mention all of the trash talking.




The line-up for the men was a dream. Pete Sampras and Roger Federer vs. Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal. I couldn't imagine a better line-up. Roger and Andre did most of the talking. Nadal tried to jump in there a few times, but no one could understand his english.




And here is Nadal, living up to his reputation as a gold digger.


Do you recognize this guy?



That's right....it's Tony Bennett. He came down and treated us all to a dose of his amazing voice.

The night ended with a real doubles match. Sam Querry and John Isner played against a couple of guys I don't know. When Isner took the court, Patrick and I threw out a little GA Bulldawg chant, that I am sure caught his attention. Gooooooo Dawgs....sic em!

Celebration Elimination

If you haven't been following too closely, Celebration Elimination is what Patrick and I have when we pay off one of our bills. As mentioned in our previous Celebration Elimination post, we are following the Dave Ramsey plan to get out of debt. We won't admit how much debt we started out with until this is all over, but it will be awhile until that happens.

Last week Patrick and I paid off one of our cars! It was so exciting writing the check and mailing it off! We celebrated by buying a small patio set for our front porch. We have been wanting one for quite a while, but Dave Ramsey kept haunting me every time we talked about buying one. Once we paid off the car, we felt better about buying it. The California weather allows us to spend a ton of time out there. We love it! Now, we have to get started on the next bill.....the other car.

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!