I sat down and crunched the numbers and with BNY in place I should be able to pay off my debt load completely by January 2009. That's about 14 months, or 28 paycheques, worth of budgeting and I don't doubt that it'll be tough, but I look forward to it, and I look forward to being debt free. I've even managed to factor in a healthy amount of spending money for each pay period so I'm not going to be completely skint, but I'm also not going to be able to spend frivolously either... I'm actually going to have to budget out my 15 days between pay each month.
I've already started, and it certainly is a challenge. The temptation to dip into debt (via "credit" cards and line of "credit") is very tempting, but I've resisted so far. With $40 in cash in my wallet to start out last weekend and about $70 in the bank account may seem like a lot, but factoring in public transportation, groceries, and miscellaneous expenses, it disappears rather quickly.
Aden and I have started bringing lunches to work this week (last week we tried bringing sandwiches but we only succeeded twice) and it's all been advance preparation that's allowed us to. Aden made chili on Sunday (some taken to work, the rest frozen), we had leftover lasagna on Wednesday, and I christened our new crock pot yesterday by gettin' myself a stew goin' like Carl Weathers, some take to work today, the rest frozen.
Progress, slow and steady.