Murphy's Law

Anything that can go wrong - will go wrong.

I always thought people that said this were too cynical, but it turns out either I am also cynical, or there is truth behind it.  Every time we had a couple of good months - BAM! - we had a really bad month that took us two steps back.  Yeah, we got our credit card paid off! The same month we had to replace walls and tile in our bathroom because of a leak behind the shower.  Here is what your e-fund (that $1000 from step 1) is for.

~You don't want to add new debt (if at all possible) so that is why step 1 comes first.~

Anyway...
we used some of our e-fund for that, so we had to go back to baby step 1 and replenish our $1000 before we paid anything extra on anymore bills.  Boo, that is so frustrating!  We were on a roll again, got one of our medical bills paid off and - BAM! - our son gets bronchiolitis and ends up in the hospital on Thanksgiving. There goes our e-fund again.  Back to baby step 1.  As you can see, this can be defeating process, but you have to persevere.  Some more murphies during this year to debt freedom include:  $1500 in car repairs, 2 new sets of tires, a new toilet & dryer, a very large bill that I didn't know about that had to get tacked on to the end, plus we cash flowed 2 semesters of college for me.

Looking at the numbers (our expenses and our salaries) I would say that it would have been impossible, but here we are just 1 year later, completely debt free besides our mortgage.  It feels fantastic!

Here is where I plug a babycenter.com page called "we're debt free."  This site has been so helpful.  You can post your budget and have them look-over and critique it for you (warning:  wear your big girl panties because money is funny and sometimes it can cause hurt feelings), ask questions about anything financially related, or just bounce ideas off of others in the same financial journey as you are.  I am on there daily reading and responding to others questions and asking plenty of my own.

Now my family is on baby step 3 (building our 3-6 months emergency fund) and I can't wait until this one is done.