And so it begins

I'm on a mission to reduce our debt and increase our savings. I am so stressed out lately about money. We both make good money but we seem to be living paycheque to paycheque. If we could reduce our debt, I could be putting more money into RRSPs, RESPs, and savings. And, most importantly, I can do things for the house that I want to do. We have a nice, new house but don't have the money to buy new furniture or do extra things that we want to do around it.

So, I asked my husband to track all spending for May. It's something that he actually seems to be keen to do. I admit, I spend more than he does. But I'm the one buying everyone's gifts and things needed for the house or for our daughter. He doesn't think to do those sorts of things. So far this month, I've spent $140.44 (of which $130.72 is for bill payments that I made).

It's challenging but also exciting to know what you owe in debt and then set a plan to eliminate it. One of my big decisions is whether I sell stock options or use savings to reduce the debt. I'm guessing yes. Also, even though the most popular train of thought for tackling debt is to pay off the highest interest credit cards first, I just got a credit card at 0% interest for one year. I moved 2 credit card balances over to it and think that I should tackle this card so that we can pay down as much as possible before the rate goes up.

Once I put all of our current debt into the spreadsheet that I set up, I'll post our current debt amount as of May 1. Then I'll track our monthly progress. I'll also track our net worth through Networth IQ.

If anyone has any suggestions for the approach I should be taking, please feel free to comment.

Ta ta for now :)