Greetings! I found MMM a couple of days ago after clicking an article on Yahoo about the Go Curry couple who retired at 30.
Just a little surfing and reading and blowing out my cerebral cortex and I am AWAKE and ALL IN. But I'm in worse shape than anyone I've read about so far. Perhaps someone could give me some pointers?
I'm 50 and so is my wife. I work as an Instrumentation Technician and gross about 70k. My wife is self-employed as a Licensed Massage Therapist and makes about 12K, so our income is around 82K.
Debts:
105,000 in school loans, which I'm not paying at the moment
19000 in credit card debt
17000 owed on 2012 Nissan Sentra. Our other vehicle is a 1988 Toyota Landcruiser, which just enjoyed 6000 worth of repairs...all of which went to credit card.
I also have some personal loans from family that I wish to repay ASAP: 13,900
I am on a rice and beans diet, buy veggies once in a while to juice. For health reasons I no longer eat dairy or meat. Someone told me that means I'm vegan, but it's not a moral choice, merely a health choice. I've been doing that for two weeks now and have found it's also a financial boost!
My wife likes this whole idea of the MMM life but is loathe to give up shopping at Whole Foods, New Seasons, and Trader Joe's as she comes from a family that ate only organic, non-GMO, simple foods. She also likes nice things (who doesn't), likes to go to the beach for the weekend and stay in hotels and eat out (who wouldn't), etc, but I am more than willing to give it up for 10 or 15 years to get to my goal.
Just today she was looking through some ads and announced that Seaside has a new hotel with a covered salt water pool. Oh, have I ever swam in one of those, it's wonderful...and I repeated what is now my mantra: Sounds fun, too bad I'm looking for ways to NOT spend money.
All that to say that I'm all in and my wife likes the idea but isn't keen on going all in.
As for daily living expenses, at the moment we live rent free in a huge mansion that is on the market. We live in it and take care of it until it sells. So we have no rent, no power bill, no water bill, no nothing except the owners wanted us to pay for internet and cable: 130 per month.
Since this house is way out in the country, about 5 miles from anything and 25 miles from work, I can't sell the Sentra (which I drive) in order to bike to work and save massive bucks!
My wife needs a larger vehicle to carry her massage table and her equipment, as she has clients all over the area and drives to them to give massage. This is rare and partly why she has such loyal clientele.
I work 4 tens, weds through saturday, and have been looking around for someplace I could work part time on the 3 days I have off, or thinking of some part time business I could start, or really just anything to bring in more money. I want to start taking massive monthly hacks at our debt but feel like my income is stagnant for now so that I have to find a way to make 82K income work hard while the rent free life lasts.
We have no toys to sell: no bikes, motorcycles, boats. No rec vehicles of any kind.
So here I am, just waking up and finding myself in a horrible situation from my own amazing stupidity and ignorance. Words really don't do me justice, I think. But I'm awake now.
I'm not putting anything into work's 401k program to make my net check bigger, and my plan is to attack the highest interest/lowest balance first and do the snowball thing. Other than that I don't know what to do.
Any suggestions?