Okay I’m not too sure how everyone else feels about this, but seriously I love my budget spreadsheet. I can spend literally hours tweaking, refining, giggling with mad glee when I find an extra dollar to add to my debt repayments. The Significant Other, looks at me with ill-disguised contempt and exasperation when I open up the laptop and power up Excel.
She just doesn’t get it.
I actually didn’t know anyone else who loved to list their debts and make a plan on paying them out and then do a happy dance for another paycheck properly budgeted & see that big ol’ red number go down in small but noticeable increments.
Until I discovered the world of Personal Finance blogs.
And there you all were. Budget Geeks, Recovering Shopaholics, Graph Nerds, Pie Chart Dorks. People like me!
Now the path to discovering Personal Finance blogs (I think that’s what we’re called) was a convoluted one. I seriously did not know any of you existed until about a few days ago. But here is my 12-step program on how I found all the Personal Finance bloggers out there, and how I started my own.
1. Get head out of ass, after 3.5 months of not following my budget, and get back on it.
2. Go to Google.
3. Look up “get out of debt”.
4. Read about debt snowball, debt avalanche, debt snowflake etc etc. Get Inspired.
5. Do this for a few days.
6. Realise a lot of these sites are saying the EXACT SAME THING (put every spare dollar into paying off debt, high interest vs lowest balance etc etc)
7. Start getting bored with the same sites.
8. Randomly stumble into http://manvsdebt.com/(don’t ask me how)
9. Realise there are plenty of people who are also writing about getting out of debt.
10. Search Google for “personal finance blogs”
11. Find http://www.kittenagogo.com/, http://diggingoutandup.wordpress.com/, http://inmintcondition.wordpress.com/, http://thebrokesensualist.wordpress.com/, http://add-vodka.com/, http://savernotaspender.blogspot.com/ and more! Get addicted.
12. Start own blog because of competitive nature.
And here we are… tomorrow is payday, and hopefully by then I’ll have worked out a way to add a table into this thing and I’ll list my debts in table form.
Now off to do the link-y thing on the side thing of this page. You know what I’m talking about.
In-debt, Fat, Short with Bad Teeth 
I could have sworn I left a comment on your other post last night.
In any case, it’s great to have more pee in the wading pool. You’ll get out of the $20k deep end in no time. And, to bring out my competitive side, I’m in more debt, shorter and have worse teeth than you. (I’m still working on the fat part.)
It did say I had 2 comments. But I didn’t see one anywhere. Like my paycheck it went to paying off credit cards. Another reason to hate credit cards. *shakes fist at credit card companies everywhere* But thanks for the encouragement. Looooove the TPS reports. Personally I can’t get into that much micromanagement of my funds, but its fun to see how other people track their spends.
And is response to your competitiveness, youre in much more debt ONLY cause you count student loans. The system we have here in Australia is a lot more friendlier and from the government, which means that you only have to pay it off once you reach a particular tax bracket, and even then its automatically deducted from your gross income. If I counted that I’d be kicking your ass 😛 As for shorter, worse teeth and fat. Like the internet says “pics or it didn’t happen” 😛
Have added your blog to my “side bar list thingy”. 🙂
See! People know what I mean! Now I have to go whats-it-called on your-thingi-ma-bob, you know what I mean. 🙂