First Post!

I'll be honest, I've only been on this PF bandwagon for maybe 3 weeks, but I've decided that if I'm going to stay accountable and on top of my finances the best way is to join in.

My story is pretty basic. I moved out when I was 18 years old right after graduating high school. That first year of living on my own I got my first credit card and discovered online shopping. By the time I was 22 years old I had accumulated about 9k of consumer debt. During those 4 years I ended up moving back home and purchasing a new vehicle which I got on a0% financing plan and paid off in 3 years.

At 22 I decided it was time to get my debt under control. I visited the bank and was able to consolidate all my loan and paid it all off in the span of 3 years. Making that final loan payment would have been such an amazing feeling if it hadn't been for the fact that during that time I'd lost my job 2x and been unemployed for about 8 weeks with no emergency fund to help out. It wasn't pretty, I totally lived off my credit card. By this point my bf and I had bought and moved into a house.

Fast forward to today. About a month ago the bank called us and wanted to offer us a better interest rate for our mortgage. At 4.9% we thought we were doing ok but decided to meet with them to see what they had in mind. They offered us 3.95% and we were able to consolidate all of our exisinting consumer debt into our mortgage. We took them up on that offer. Combine we had just under 20K which was split right down the middle and I'd say half of it was things for the house. The nice thing about the lower interest rate is that our bi-weekly mortgage payments have stayed the same. The slightly depressing thing is that our mortgage now is exactly the amount it was when we closed our house just over 5 years ago... Our ammortization period remains the same though, just under 20 years so while the fact that we've added so much money back onto our mortgage sucks, the interest is much better and our house is worth so much more today than the day we bought it so I'm happy about our decision. Also, in order to make up for the extra money I'm saving by being debt-free, and for the extra money we've added to the mortgage, I'll be making either a biweekly or monthly payment back to the mortgage for the amount I used to put on my credit card, and then sometimes more when I come into extra money. Anything to help speed along the process.

In another post I'll actually put what my monthly budget and goals are, but since this is somewhat of an 'intro post' I wanted to point out that I am still living in my house with my boyfriend. He and I have never joined our finances. Last month, after about 6 years together he brought it up and after giving it much thought I decided to keep things the way they are. We never fight about money. I manage all of the finances and he just transfers me what he owes. This process has worked for us and I can't justify changing it. Also, our views on budgeting and saving are completly different. He doesn't believe in saving and while I currently don't have too much money saved up, I see the importance in it and I've started to open up various savings accounts. I'll get into all that in a later post.

So that's kind of my story in a nutshell. I'm not officially debt-free yet as the bank only mailed out the drafts to my creditors this week, but today I logged into my online banking and my Visa was paid off except for the new month's interest which I then proceeded to pay off right away! Still to go are my Leons card, a Citi loan, Dell and a credit line.

This blog will be my adventures in saving and maintaining a debt-free lifestyle. I'm currently 28 years old and after 10 years of living in debt I'm reading to try something different!