Debt Diet

Yesterday Anthony and I sat and watched Oprah, (amazing that he watched it I know) and it was all about lessening debt. Oprah calls the segment 'The Great American Debt Diet.' Now as some of you know, Anthony and I set two goals recently, one was to pay off all the credit card debt and secondly paying the bills the minute we get them versus waiting until shortly before they are due. Well, we have successfully reached both. I now pay the bills almost the minute I get them and we have paid all the credit card debt down, getting rid of two of the cards and we only have one card and it has $301.46 left on it that I will pay off in the next two months. Now this may not seem like an accomplishment to some but I am so proud of us. Now the only debt we have is the new mini van and Anthony's school loans. YAY US!!

Watching Oprah yesterday was inspiring only to the point that it gave me ideas on how to be more organized and how to save more money. First I decided to organize the bill box. I have had this bill box for a while, but to be honest it was a mess. I took some pictures of what it looked like before...

Also here is a stack of papers that was on top of the box! Very organized, right!!! LOL!


So this morning I headed to get my morning Starbucks (don't worry it's free, I work there) and then off to Target to pick up a few things to help me get organized. I walked the aisles getting ideas of what would work best for me! I decided on only two things, envelopes and new folders. See below.

After an hour or so of labeling and going through I am finished. This is what my remodeled box looks like, very organized and everything has a folder and a place.

Maddie Grace found this process very exhausting!


Next I want onto try and devise a plan to save money on groceries. HAHAHA, being married to a Chef has some major perks, however it had two major downfalls, first putting on weight due to the amount of butter and cream we eat is very easy, but most of all we spend TONS of money at the grocery store. So Anthony and I had a discussion about shopping once a week and using coupons. Now if you were to look at our bank statements you would see we probably go to the grocery store 4 times a week spending on average of $50 or so dollars! YIKES!!! I think we can do better. We agreed that we would come up with a menu for the week and shop for that week and then not return to the store until the next week. Here is the plan, I am going to buy a Sunday paper every week for the coupon ads as well as us some of the coupon websites and go from there. After cutting the coupons I put them in their respective envelopes and await there usage. Also, Anthony and I will write our grocery list on another enevlope and stick the coupons we are going to use in it. Just like this.

I am hoping to be able to stick to this and Thanks to the Oprah Show I am hoping to make one extra car payment every 3 months and not acquire any more debt.