This is a guest post from Debt Free Revolution, special thanks to her for taking the time to do this. I was going to wait until after the end of the credit card cut up contest but I have the flu so here it is:

Jesse asked me to do up a guest post since I just became consumer debt free on February 26th, and I am happy to oblige! He thinks y’all will be particularly interested in the “big picture” since my journey to eliminating debt (except for the mortgage now … and that will get its day) spanned just three days shy of fourteen months. It felt tough at times, but this was something I knew in my bones had to be done if I was ever going to turn the financial ship around in my life.

I accomplished this debt free feat using the Dave Ramsey “baby steps” and recommend them personally.

Once I made the decision to get out of debt, I had to learn a few productive money habits. The first was getting caught up on my bills, and paying them on time (cringe; yes I was that disorganized). The second was learning how to make a budget that works. Yes, I just used that nasty “B” word. Except it’s no longer a bad word for me. The best quote about budgeting I think I have ever heard was: “A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” Some folks rename their budget, calling it a “cash flow plan” or maybe even “allocated spending plan” since that sounds fancy, or you can just call it “Fred” if you want. (”Fred” says we can’t buy that right now.)

Doing a realistic working budget was a huge eye-opening experience for me. Before I wrote it down in dry erase and white, I thought we didn’t make enough to make ends meet. After writing it down, I discovered that somehow at least $600 per month was just disappearing! Over a year later, I still can’t say for sure where that money went to … although I suspect it vanished in the local restaurants.

OK, so I was current on my bills and I now had a working realistic budget in hand … time to kill some debt, right? Not so fast, Hoss …. and this is where I am so grateful I was following the Dave Ramsey plan! The next step is to build up a baby emergency fund of approximately $1,000. No problem, I said. I had a non-retirement mutual fund I could cash out, and I did. I squirreled away the $1k and used the rest to finish off the last two months of my car note and start in on the next debt on my list.

Then my furnace broke at the end of January when it was only 21F outside. The repairs ended up being $1140, and it wasn’t the only time I tapped the baby emergency fund! The other time was a few months later in May when I had to replace the brakes on all four wheels on my car. So … I play my radio a little to loud to have heard the brakes squealing BEFORE it became a serious problem. I had about $300 of the $538 it cost to fix that, so I only pulled about $250 to cover it. I distinctly remember my son whispering to me after I paid the bill: “Mom, can we afford this?” I whispered back: “Yes, we have an emergency fund.”

Which brings me to another thing I did: get a weekend job delivering pizzas. It doesn’t have to be pizza delivery, but picking up a part-time job on the weekends is a great way to bring up your income. Just don’t work somewhere you might be tempted to spend!

Oh, and one thing I didn’t do that I wish I did: convince hubby to sell his truck. Somewhere on hubby’s Y-chromosome is the “I Love Trucks” gene, and there was just nothing I could say or do to convince him to sell it, even though its sale price was MORE than one year worth of salary for him. Hubby dug his heels in deep on this one, so it was a matter of knuckling down and simply paying it off. He did promise to drive the wheels off of said truck, so hopefully it will last until at least 2015 (it’s a 2005, but also a Chevy). But if you can sell high-dollar items without causing a major rift in your relationship … DO IT!

And right there are the keys I used: better habits about paying bills, getting on a working realistic budget, and getting a part-time job. Just be sure to put that baby emergency fund in place LOL Add in a natural stubborn streak and the burning desire and determination to get out the chains of debt, and you see me DEBT FREE but the house, BABY!!!! LOL It’s been a week now and I am still celebrating.

Oh, there’s a whole lot of other parts to this story but Jesse asked for a “big picture” post which was in danger of being the size of an ebook before revision. Although Jesse has left the door open to the possibility of further guest posts that deal with y’all’s questions

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