The Logistics

Every successful plan needs

detailed goals and objectives put in place.

And here at the Gilbert's,

we sat down at our local Starbucks

(classic Connecticut)

and wrote everything down in our budget notebook!

Talk about budget savvy,
we bought this beauty at the Dollar Store :)

It sounds very corny

and quite nerdy to be honest,

but it definitely helps and lets you see

everything; debits, credits, bills, goals, etc.

When Dan was younger, 

he had acquired some credit card debt

and sought professional help to get rid of it.

So from his previous experience,

we learned the best way to get rid of our debts:

start smallest to largest.

For us,

our smallest is our credit card,

next is our car,

my student loan,

then Dans student loans.

Above you can see our goals, hypothesis 

(we did meet in psychological research and stats class),

and debt line up.

We've never liked credit cards,

I, Nicole, actually HATE them with a firey passion.

I know too many people who are literally drowning

in credit card debt and will never get out of it.

The only reason we have credit card debt is because

I was unforunately in a car accident where I was out of

work for 8 months, then working part time for a year.

We had to survive and Dan did have a small credit card,

maximum amount was $5,000.

And at the end of my work dry spell,

it was maxxed out with medical bills, groceries,

going out on adventures when we could… you get the idea.

Our next two pages are the break downs for everything-

what are the balances of our debts as of January 1, 2016,

our plan of action,

pay schedule which is explained above,

our incomes,

and a very detailed break down of our monthly bills.

This we found to be the most important part of 

setting up or plan.

It's important to see everything laid out

and where all the money is going.

We loved to go out, to dinner, to the casino,

with friends, for drinks…

When we put our income to debt ratio onto paper,

we were seeing just how much money we were throwing away.

The specifics.

This is pretty self explanatory.

During January,

we found that we were able to save a good amount of money,

and that we could divide our savings into our target debt

and into savings. 

We know our main goal is to pay off our debts,

but we also want to make sure we are putting money

into savings for the future.

We have a monthly break down that we 

fill in after every month to see how we did:

our debits, credits, and where the saved money is going.

And then we have our end of the year summary!

We hope you're learning as much as we did

at the beginning of our Financial Adventure…

Stay tuned for our monthly experiences so far!