I recently took over managing our household finances. Now that I’m at home with our daughter, I thought I should take responsibility for the day to day budget overseeing. Seeing the cold hard numbers is rather startling. I was hoping to find a way to pay down the significant student loan debt that we owe. Fortunately, we don’t have much debt, just our mortgage and student loans. We don’t have car payments or credit card debt. But better than half of the student loans are accruing interest at a rate of 6.8%. Ouch! While the loans are currently in deferment, that won’t last much longer. I am a stay at home mom, which means that we only have one income, and while that income does pay all the bills, that is pretty much all that it does. I keep going over and over the numbers hoping to find some extra money, but I just can’t seem to. But then I discovered The Simple Dollar. The author of this blog has an impressive story of how he and his family got themselves deeply into debt, but also dug themselves out. While he clearly had larger income to work with than we do, I still found many of his points encouraging. While his series 31 Days to Fix Your Finances is several years old, I thought it might serve as an encouraging jumping off point. So here it goes.
