s/o: how did you get yourself out of "the hole?"

[Anonymous]

See the "hit super hard" post.

DH brought to our marriage about 10k worth of cc debt on dumb stuff. I brought about 10k worth of cc debt and 50k worth of student loan debt due to grad school (and stupid stuff, yes). We then bought a house - shoulda waited - which is now about 50-75k underwater and steadily improving.

Student loan is current, interest rate is 2.7% so this is the least of our worries.
Mortgage is current. Lots of houses moving in our neighborhood so we are watching values obsessively.
We are down to about 1k of credit card debt. This is pretty much the only area where we feel that we have made good progress.

I had much better credit than DH. Opened a 0%-on-balance-transfers card, transfered balance, paid it down. Continued receiving transfer offers, kept taking them up (between the same cards, not opening new ones). Most importantly, removed said credit card from DH's wallet
Most of our debt was due to "Payday's not til friday but I need gas today and the electric bill is due, oh no" incidences. We now pay this month's bills (all autodebit) with last month's money (this is a separate account, not linked to debit card). Basically I see it as I work for free, and the mortgage, car payment, insurance, phones, cable, utilities, and most of daycare is free as well... no more late fees, no more worrying. DH makes less this month (sales)? We eat less $$ food. DH had a great month? We pay off more debt and maybe buy a steak.
I make most of our "convenience foods"
Neither of us has expensive hobbies.
We have about 2 mos living expenses in the bank. This means that when the dryer broke, I pulled money from savings to fix it, as opposed to putting it on credit (and paying more for it that way).
I discovered the barter economy. It's basically all from one online forum that I frequent, but I have traded great stuff with people from all over the world... kid/baby stuff, clothes, even a pampered chef cheese grater If I'm not using it, and you would, and you have XYZ that I need... let's just stick it in the mail! Obviously it's well-policed, but it's so helpful and really fun.

Now, we have yet to tackle the mortgage situation. We would love to move, but being that upside down just isn't working for us. We do not qualify for any hamp/harp/etc and had a mortgage attorney tell us there was no way in hell we'd qualify for a short sale. But we feel really good about killing the cc debt... we caused the problem on our own, and we fixed it on our own.

Someone please chime in with a heartwarming mortgage story

[Anonymous]

I'm really impressed with everything you've managed to do-- congrats!

[Anonymous]

I am, too. Your next step is to put all of the money that you have been sending to credit cards into savings. That way you will have money for a down payment, and/or money to bring to the closing table if you have to sell your house at a loss. And keep reinvestigating refinancing every six months or so.

[Anonymous]

It might be worth trying Aimloan.com--we were able to refi through them. It helped that our house was worth more than we thought--yours might be too. They have an online calculator that will show you if you're eligible to refi (you put in your estimate of what the house is worth).

What barter forum do you use?

[Anonymous]

I'd also like to know the name of the barter forum you use.