2015 Will Be The Year of Change

My husband and I began the Dave Ramsey Total Money Make Over on January 1, 2013. Though we have paid off $30,000 we still have about $50,000 remaining. We do not have any credit cards and the remaining debt we have is a vehicle loan and education loans.  We have become stagnant in our pursuit to be debt free. We have making our payments, spending only what we have earned but we haven't been making extra efforts like we first did when we initially started this journey.

I am proclaiming that 2015 will be the year of change. My husband and I have a true desire to be debt free. The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7.  I believe that it can happen within the next two years but I would like to see it happen sooner. This year we will be making some more significant changes to help us with our ultimate goal.

Here are some of the changes we will be making this year to be more in intentional with our spending:

Getting Rid of Cable
We have made a decision to get rid of our cable -- after the Superbowl of course. This would easily save us over $1200 a year.

Sticking to CASH only, No Debit card swiping
We got into a bad habit of swiping our debit cards in an effort to "track" our spending during the holidays. Once we started it this we got back into the habit of swiping for every little thing and those purchases added up fast.

Meal Planning, Once a Week Cooking, Using our Crockpot
We need to be better with meals. I may shop for the week and make a meal plan but that meal plan goes quickly out the window during an unexpected illness, school event, extracurricular activities etc. Then we find ourselves ordering take out or buying a rotisserie chicken with all the fixings. No budget friendly.
This year I plan on using my crockpot several times a week. I also plan on trying the once a week cooking or freezer cooking techniques.

Less is More
Trying to use what we have instead of buying more. Reducing our clutter so we are aware of the items we already have or even selling the items that are no longer needed.

Saying NO to ourselves
We actually haven't even said this to ourselves - ever. If we want to go out to dinner, we go. If there is no money left over in our grocery budget for the week we still buy that loaf of bread, jar of gravy etc. This year we have to stick to our budget and say No! That means if there is no money left in the clothing envelope then we will have to make due until the next month.

Looking forward to getting back to our "Gazelle" intense plan to get out of debt in 2015.