Hi all, I spent too much time and money not being smart about finances, plain and simple....I bought stuff in the hopes it would make me happier or Id get enjoyment out of it, and you know, none of it changed my life, and it weighed me down. This won't surprise mustachians, of course..... Ive spent 2013 coming around to really understand all of this, and i stumbled upon the MMM stuff a few months ago. Without going into all the details, Over the last year or two, I racked up consumer debt, about 12k total. There is nothing particularly fancy that i recall buying, no emergency bill or repair that I had to charge to it. Sad, right? That's how it was, and so for the last few months, I've been working my way through it, got it down to about 10k. Obviously, I want to get this monkey off of my back as quickly as possible, but things keep coming up....huge car service and repair bill I didn't plan for, vet bills, etc. the good news is I haven't let those add to my debt, but the result is that while paying down this debt I have zero cash saved up on hand. i had a goal of both having a fair amount of cash cushion AND paying down my debt aggressively, but I cant seem to do both since everything cashwise gets eaten up by these random extra bills. I guess MMM would say obviously the cash stash is second to debt at 13 percent interest, but I can anticipate needing at least few thousand dollars on hand for medical and other necessary bills shortly.....strategies? Is one more important than the other for someone like me? I can't take an extra job at this stage....so my cash flow is what it is. If you were aggressively paying debt down, did you also save at the same time? Thanks.
