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[quote=Anonymous]Chiming in kind of late here...

When DH and I got married, we had significant debt- he had about $40k in credit card debt (!), I had an interest-free loan from my dad for grad school at about $20k, and when DH's car when kaput, we bought a new one at $26k (our only car).  We paid all of this debt in about 18-24 months through a combination of luck, planning, and good salaries.  First and most importantly, we didn't have kids, which are obviously a huge money drain if they're in daycare.  We also lived in a condo right across from the Ballston Metro (literally steps away) and our landlord liked us as tenants and only raised the rent once in 4 years.  We paid next to nothing for it- I think the most we ever paid was $1500 a month.  Both of us are feds and we had decent salaries that allowed us to save a lot and pay down debt.  Also, we only had one car and while it took us about 6 months to pay it off, not having monthly payments over a long period of time helped a lot.  Because I had excellent credit (over 800), we were able to get interest-free financing and paid off the car quickly with no interest charged.

With my husband's credit cards, I think we paid off the smallest balance first to give us more a sense of satisfaction. I know there's debate on whether it's best to pay off the highest interest one first, though.  My husband ran up debt for 2 reasons- the first is that he went to private schools for both undergrad and grad school, which of course is a choice.  He worked full-time at Wal-mart in college to pay for school, but still needed to partially live off credit cards. He also was fully employed in grad school, but went to GW, which is obviously pricey.  Secondly, he was just a poor spender.  His family doesn't have good spending/saving habits and I think once he started carrying some debt, he felt overwhelmed and hopeless, so he thought why not charge more b/c he'll never get out from underneath all that debt.

I immediately put a stop to that thinking and we started saving very aggressively.  Cut off his daily lunches (less than $7 a day, but that adds up); stopped his wanton spending on CDs, etc.; and we made up a State of Our Union sheet where we tracked our money and debt.  We also said that if a purchase was over $50, it needed to be discussed/approved before being made.  We didn't totally starve ourselves or do nothing fun, but most discretionary money went to paying down debt.

As I said, a ton of factors figured into our being able to pay down debt quickly and I know it's hard.  I'm not sure with kids and a hourse we'd be able to do the same today.[/quote]

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