Six Figure Debt

My situation is a little different because when I married and had kids I had a good job, a healthy 401k and equity in my house.  Through a series of poor decisions and  a major job loss I ended up with over $140k in secured and unsecured debt.  The normal signs of trouble weren’t there because almost half the debt is housing losses and business start-up capital that I used on my home equity line.

Many of us do however see the signs of financial trouble before they hit, and either ignore or don’t recognize them, here are 8 signs that you may be in financial trouble.

My wife and I are always on the lookout for ways to trim money out of our grocery budget.  The money we spend on food is one of the largest expenses in our budget every month, experts estimate that the average household spends 30% of it’s monthly budget on food.  I can across this article on Yahoo finance and it lists 7 ways that grocery stores rip you off.

The author suggests these 7 tips to save money on your grocery bill immediately. 

Since I recommitted to this web site two months ago I have seen a large increase in daily traffic.  I’ve also had some really good blogs link to me as I battle my way out of my own mess.  I found a couple of great new personal finance blogs and wanted to share them with you.  These blogs are great because they are the stories of real people struggling to reign in thier spending and become debt free.

In addition to the great blogs on my blogroll, check out these two new blogs that show serious potential to teach you how others are arresting their debt.

My wife and I have finally decided to look for another house to rent.  We can’t purchase a new home because we already own a home in another state, thank GOD it is rented or who knows where we would be financially.  The renters cover everything, including the taxes so the house is a break even proposition for us.  Without the renters we would be forced to short sale or worse, foreclose.

January proved to be a good month in our debt reduction quest.  As you can see from the graphs on the left, we made a significant dent in our debt.

Overall we reduced out outstanding debt by  $4261.38 in January alone.  We are using Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball and I am really encouraged by our progress.  I have a great spreadsheet that I downloaded and I pay the exact amount the spreadsheet says to pay every month, it is amazing how disciplined you can be when it is layed out for you.

I touched on this last week when I posted about Bank Of America lowering my credit lines even though I was not past due and wasn’t missing payments.

The New York Times confirmed the rumors that I’d heard concerning the reasons banks were cutting credit lines.  The article explains that many issues in your personal life like where you shop, the industry you work in and the housing prices in your area are effecting how your credit card companies view you.