Goal: Debt FREE in one year!

Or I should say credit card debit free in one year. We'll still have a car payment and mortgage to pay down. The last time I wrote about debt, I wasn't sure how much to reveal. Money is a very taboo topic (at least it feels that way) and well, I'm a little ashamed at how much we have accumulated. It's been about a year since I last wrote about it so here's were we are at:

-We have paid down very little debt but it also didn't increase
-Every time we managed to save any money something would happen and it would drain our savings
- With the exception of groceries, I have left all of the budgeting and bill paying to Alan.
- We had intended on paying down some debt with last years tax return but had to put a new roof on our house instead.
-Our biggest mistakes: we spent more on vacations than we had planned and didn't save for things like Christmas, birthday gifts and date nights.

What we have learned:
-It's unrealistic to live on a budget so tight that you don't plan for fun things.
-We don't NEED cable. We have an antenna for local channels, use netflix, and have our computer hooked up to the tv. So we have access to a ton of tv for about $4 plus the cost of Internet. We don't miss our $100 cable bill (but I do miss TLC).
- We have discovered(at least new to us) many free forms of entertainment. At least once a month every museum in the Seattle area has a free entrance day. We go to the library several times a month. The second it stops raining we run to the park. Luke loves to watch the planes take off at the Boeing plant near by. In the summer, we have a free petting zoo near by and many parks have sprinklers or pools for free.
-Couponing has allowed for some luxury items to fit into our grocery budget like nice toiletries, organic milk, produce, and bread. I'd love to buy organic meat but it's out of range for now.

So here we are with no hope for a significant increase in income for a few more years and large monthly payments to interest (I hate paying interest!). We've made the decision to sell my Starbucks stock that I've been sitting on. It's finally at a profit again. And while I'd love to sit on it until it gets back to were it was, we want out of debt NOW. With a big chuck paid off we can use the snow ball technique of putting a larger payment to the remaining debt. Within in a year, it should all be gone. Then we can use the money we were putting towards credit cards to the car payment. Hopefully, we can pay off Alan's car the year after that. The idea of no credit card or car payments sounds AMAZING.

We talked about what we really want to accomplish financially (like put Luke through college and have a real emergency fund) and realized that we were never going to get there if we are always playing the debt game.