Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell my story of freedom from debt! I love to talk about how my family became debt free, because it inspires others that they can get out of debt themselves.

About five years ago, my husband and I started out with about $25,000 in debt between credit cards, a car loan, and various other smaller bills (one to a hospital and another to a landscaping company). Our monthly payments on all these totaled about $500 per month. This was almost as much as we spent on food!

At that point, we decided to get serious about debt reduction. We bought a copy of The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and enrolled in a Financial Peace University class at church. We learned about creating a monthly budget, and using envelopes to put your allocated money for things like food, clothing, entertainment, and gifts to keep from overspending. This is critical because it ensures that you don't accidentally spend your debt reduction money at the grocery store.

We also learned about the snowball method of eliminating credit card debt. First, we made a list of all our debts, smallest to largest. The smallest was the hospital bill, about $350, so we attacked that one first. To scrape up some extra money, we sold some of our books and other items on eBay. I took an extra job teaching online college classes, and my husband (who is a teacher) taught summer school.

We knocked off the hospital bill in about a month. Paying off the first bill freed up about $50/month to apply to the next bill, the landscaping bill of about $800. We make extra payments on that one for about three months until it was paid off. Then it got a bit harder. We had already consilidated the car payment and all the credit cards onto one card that had a 2.9% interest rate for the life of the balance. Now for the hard part--paying it off.

It took about 18 months of serious effort, including our extra jobs, to pay off that last bill. I got pregnant during that time and was determined to be debt free before the baby was born. . .and I was! I think the baby provided a little extra motivation.

We did it, and have never regretted it. You can do it too! Feel free to send me a private message if you want to know more.

You can read more of my Get Out of Debt Journey on my blog. Worried about the economy? Find out how to Survive the Recession Now..