Hello all, first time poster here (and frankly any online forum). I recently discovered MMM via the FatWallet Finance forum, where I had lurked for years. Up until now, my financial story would be more appropriate in the Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy forum, but having read through many of the postings and seen what is possible through “Badassity”, I want in.
I’ve chosen to do this now because I’m at a crossroads. My wife, my son (8 months) and I currently live in the upstairs section of my in-laws house (an unmustachian 4500 sq. ft. monstrosity). Several months ago, we sold our underwater house, which was also in a rapidly declining area and moved in here to save money for a new house. The thought was that it would be easy to save for a new house and pay off all of our existing debt if we stayed with my wife’s parents for a little while. However, after several months, our debt remains roughly the same and our savings hasn’t experienced the dramatic increase we were hoping for.
My wife and I rarely speak about money, until now, so when I told her where we were savings wise her response was, “where is all of our money going?” Unfortunately, I didn’t even know at that point. It turns out that it’s all the usual stuff I’ve read about here… restaurants, new clothes, gas, etc. So, despite both of us being well employed and making pretty decent money, we are still in debt with credit cards, student loan and a car payment, and saving less than 10% of our income. Something clearly has to change.
Tomorrow I start a fantastic new job, and I’m determined not to waste this opportunity to finally get some financial independence. I’ll be posting my basic financial information below in the next couple of days and updating this post periodically to hold myself accountable for the results.
If anyone has advice or would simply like to say, “good luck”, I’d welcome all. Otherwise, I’ll be adding more soon.
Thanks for reading…
