Detailed About Me

Hmm....As you can gather by the title, my wife and I are recently married newlyweds. As a matter of fact, we just celebrated our 1 year annivesary last month. I'm 20 and my wife is 24. We never really were bad off financially, but in January of this year I read Dave Ramsey's - The Total Money Makeover. Talk about a life changing book...

After reading the book, I decided it was time for us to take hold of our financial lives. Here's a breakdown of where we stood:

• Credit Union Credit Card - $285
• HH Gregg Credit Card - $550
• Lowe's Credit Card - $1,050
• Personal Loan - $3,500
• Mobile Home Loan - $6,500
• Truck Loan - $11,000

Right before we got married, we purchased a somewhat run-down singlewide for $4,000. I figured we would need around $6k to move it and fix it up the way we wanted. The personal loan was for $3,500 and my parents put their car up for collateral for the other $6,500. We fell a little short on renovations, hence the Lowe's and HH Gregg credit cards.

We're just starting our "real" jobs - I work as a customer service rep for a high-end furniture manufacturer (scary in today's economy) - been there almost a year and a half. My wife just started 3 weeks ago as a customer service rep for a telecommunications company. Our total household income now is about $42,000. I still work part-time for a grocery store, and she works part-time at Wal-Mart. All of our extra money goes toward our debt.

Here's where we stand now:

• Credit cards - $0
• Personal Loan - $0
• Mobile Home Loan - $4,625
• Car Loan - $5,310
• Truck Loan - $8,787

My wife's car was in the process of dying, so we bought a 2003 Mustang from her aunt for $4000. We rolled the personal loan into the car loan since the car was valued at around $5,500 - plus we got a lower interest rate. All in all, we got rid of the personal, got a new car, and our monthly payments actually went down by $5 a month.

That's enough for now. If you read this far, you should know most of my financial life as newlywed. I look forward to blogging about our quest to be debt free, as well as hearing from everyone else!