Pay off my credit card debt in 3 years

From the last time I wrote, I had the narrow perspective of only focusing on paying off my cards. My point of view has broadened since then, to include all my debts.

• paid off the car (hers)
• paid off the truck (his)
• paid off 1 of 2 education loans
• paid off 2 of 5 credit cards

My main focus is still paying off the cards, however. That’s why I haven’t changed this goal.

Now that the ball is rolling, I set a specific dollar amount as February’s goal: put 30% of February’s paychecks towards paying it off. It took more discipline compared to January, knowing I had to meet a specific number, but Goal Met! I’m working on March’s goal right now.

January is the first month I am starting my debt snowball. With the car paid off and the overtime I’m getting, I have enough money to pay off credit card 1 of 5. CC 1 has the smallest balance, so it is mostly just a drop in the bucket…but I find debt snowballing effective so far – I like feeling like I am getting somewhere.

I finally tracked down all the things that were automatically charging to my cards and cancelled them all, except for Netflix. I plan to cancel my cable and bump up Netflix instead. I also started a debt snowball spreadsheet, calculated from whatsthecost.com. I cancelled my cell phone (since we have a home phone now), and I’m going to use the extra money from the cell phone bill and the difference left from the Netflix/cable bill to start off my debt snowball.