Introduction

Hello there.  Thanks for checking out my new blog.  I have been thinking about starting this blog for quite some time now and I am excited that I finally have.  


So the title of this blog is Life Without Credit Cards and that is the life that my husband I lead, unfortunately it is not without debt.  It all started back when we were dating, just after college working at WDW and living on pennies.  I had had credit cards for a long time and didn't have much debt, my husband got a credit card shortly after we started dating.  Well its the same old story, we didn't have a lot of money, were living on our own and spent more than we made using credit cards.  It was fun for sure, but not so responsible.  Then, after we got married we made a crazy decision to move across the country to WA without jobs.  We put all the moving expenses on credit cards and after we moved even though we found jobs quickly we still had to supplement our income with credit.  That pattern continued for the next 3 years.  Now I'm not saying we bought lavish items, went on crazy vacations or ate out every night, not even close.  We tried to live within our means but we did have to use credit cards to fix our cars etc, and yes we did use them to go out occasionally and go on vacation once a year.  


Fast forward to the beginning of 2010, we were living in Sacramento, both had stable jobs, and had some how managed to buy a house.  However earlier that summer one of our two cars died, to replace it we bought a scooter, on credit.  Then in Jan my husband was rear ended and his car was totaled.  After buying a sensible used Corolla we looked at our finances and our maxed out credit cards and knew that something had to change. We thought about bankruptcy but we wanted to take responsibility and pay off the debt we had en-cured.  Thankfully we were able to find a great repayment plan with Money Management International.  Unfortunately we had to close all of our credit cards so that MMI could negotiate low interest rates, which they did.  Our plan is for 4.5 years and then all of our credit cards will be payed off! We are just over 2 years in at this point.   Unfortunately even with the lowered interest rates we needed more money every month so we got a roommate.  That was a really hard decision for me to go along with but it worked out and helped us a lot, until we moved back to WA this past Oct. 


So there is your introduction to my life and how it became one without credit cards.   I am going to use this blog to tell our story, vent my frustrations and hopefully share some joys.