So, for the next two years I will be tackling my budget situation. I figure I will document it all here, so in two years I can reflect back and say, “Man, that was a lot of work, but now I’m rolling in money!”

First, let’s break down exactly how I am going to accomplish this:

Took the common knowledge that “You pay off your smallest debts first, and then move to the big ones” Don’t just pay the minimum amount

Those are the only things I am honestly basing this off of.

There are four things I need to get paid off:

Best Buy Card ~$1k Capital One Card ~$1k Bank of America Credit Card ~$7k Car Loan ~$3.5k

In total, more or less that is ~$12.5k. I want to be transparent and open with you, so in the next few days I will post exactly what the debts are and the payments I am paying on them.

This is the way I plan on approaching this:

Pay off the Best Buy card, it is 0% interest until October, and I can afford to pay $260/month, so in 4 months I will get that paid off well before the interest rates kick in. By then it will be mid-July. In the time being, pay on the Capital One card what it would take to get the card paid off in 3 years ($35/month I believe). It’s not a huge dent, but it’s a dent nonetheless. Once the Best Buy card is paid off, I will take the $260/month I was paying for that payment and add it to the Capital One payment, in 4 months hopefully the Capital One card will be to a level that I can get that paid off in 3 months. By then it will be mid-October. This will be two months before my wedding, so I’m not exactly sure on my financial situation around this time…but here’s hoping that I can stick to this plan. The big debt is the Bank of America card, in the months that I am paying off my Capital One card and my Best Buy card, I will be paying a monthly payment of about $250 on my Bank of America credit card, which are the payments to get it paid off in 3 years. On top of the fact that I can double that payment, and I will be living with my wife so my rent and other expenses will cut in half, I can hopefully get that paid off in no later than 9 months. The car payment will eventually pay itself off in November of 2012. It’s a great car, and I don’t plan on getting rid of it anytime soon, so I’ll let that do it’s thing.

So that’s the plan. Hopefully this will be used as a tool for people in the future searching for financial help.

I have created a budget calculator in a Google Docs spreadsheet, but I am not too sure if I should post make it public. Probably when I’m done with this, I will make it public to show the breakdown of my expenses.

Wish me luck!