Our Journey Begins!

We got our first grown-up paycheck! Well, I’ve been getting paychecks from my job for a month now, but my teller checks aren’t nearly as nice as Mrs. Wealth Gospel’s first teacher check. 8 looooong months after graduation, I finally feel like our journey has begun. And after taking a look at our checking account balance and our credit card bill for the month (of course we pay it off every month), we’re starting our journey next month with literally (in the real sense of that word) nothing in the bank. It’s a good thing our anniversary is next week. We’ll have two things to celebrate!

I guess I was a little deceptive when I said nothing in the bank, though. I just calculated our net worth as of today and with student loans, a car loan, and some medical debt to put Mrs. Wealth Gospel’s lower back together again, we’re at a cool -$16,005.13. It’s a good thing I’ve got that Roth IRA I socked money into while I was single. That keeps us under -$20k. Kind of reminds me of this picture I shared a few posts ago:

Funny isn’t it, how appearance can belie the truth?

Anyway, here are my unofficial goals to start out our new life. They will become official once I discuss them with my wife 🙂

1. Save like crazy until we can afford a 5% down payment on a home AKA let’s see how much MORE debt we can get into!
2. Once we get into a house and recover from all the ridiculous costs associated with making it a home, start a wicked debt payoff schedule to get down to everything but the mortgage. I’ll be using the Debt Elimination Spreadsheet with Accelerator, which you can find here. I actually spent a an hour or two on that yesterday and it’s amazing to see how much faster you can pay it all down with extra payments. The goal is to have it all paid off except the mortgage in 3 years.
3. Set up a plan for saving! We’ll be taking our own advice, of course.

I’m sure that between now and then other thoughts will come up about how we can rock our finances. And maybe (fingers crossed) I’ll find a job with a salary so we can do even more of the above (except for the mortgage, we’ll keep that one as low as possible).

How did you feel when you got your first real life paycheck? If you’re still waiting for it, how do you feel about Nutella?

p.s. I helped a lady pay off a loan at the bank today. It had a pretty decent amount left and she was SOOOOO excited! And the excitement was infectious. That’s what it’s all about, peeps. I wanted to join her in a William Wallace shout.

Instead, I will just dedicate this song to her.