Hi. We're Steve and Amy. We're married, we're in our early thirties, we have one kid (Josh, 6) and one dog, and in the summer of 1998 we sat down at the kitchen table and added up everything we owed that wasn't the house. The number was $23,400. Amy cried. Steve went for a drive. Then we came back and made a plan.

This page is that plan and the record of what's happened since. We put it up in March, mostly to keep ourselves honest (it's a lot harder to skip a month when the whole Internet can see the table). We update the ledger on the first weekend of every month after the statements come in. As of September 1999 we owe $9,100. That's $14,300 gone in 15 months. We're not there yet, but you can see the end from here.

Nobody decides to get $23,000 in debt. It just sort of accumulates. Ours was: a car we bought new when the old one died and we were tired; a boat we bought because Steve's buddy was selling it cheap (it was not cheap); Christmas, three years running, on a card; a furnace; a wedding for Amy's sister that we helped with; and a lot of $40 dinners that we could not tell you a thing about now. Here is how it broke down the day we added it up:

The boat had already been paid off, if you can call it that. It was paid off on the MasterCard.

The thing that got us was the minimum payments. $550 a month and, when Amy ran the numbers on the calculator in the checkbook, the cards alone were costing us about $200 a month just in interest. Two hundred dollars a month for nothing. That was the number that made us mad enough to do something.

We gave ourselves two years: July 1998 to July 2000. Here is the whole plan. There's nothing clever in it.

1. Write down a budget and actually follow it. We had never done this. Amy made a sheet with every bill, groceries, gas, Josh's stuff, and a $60-a-month "fun" line for the two of us. Everything left over after the minimums goes to the debt. The first month it was $190. We taped the budget to the inside of the cupboard where the coffee is, so we see it every morning.
2. Pay off the smallest card first. Everybody says pay the highest rate first, and the math agrees with them. We did the smallest one first because we needed a win. The store card was gone in October 1998 and we cut it up on the back porch and it felt great. Then the payment we had been making on it rolled onto the Visa. Then the Visa's payment rolled onto the MasterCard. Amy calls it snowballing. It works because the number you're throwing at the next card keeps getting bigger.
3. Sell the boat. This was the hard one, for Steve. We sold it in November 1998 for $2,800 to a man from two towns over. Every dollar went to the Visa. Steve would like it noted that he still misses the boat.
4. A second job. Starting in January 1999 Steve delivers pizzas Friday and Saturday nights, 5 to midnight. It's about $300 to $350 a month with tips, and all of it goes to the debt. Amy picked up two extra shifts a month at the clinic when they were offered.
5. No new debt. The cards stay in a coffee can in the freezer. We are not kidding. If you have to wait for a block of ice to thaw before you can buy something, you have time to think about whether you need it.
6. Windfalls go to the debt. Tax refund, the $50 Steve's mom sends at Christmas, the check from the insurance company when they overbilled us. All of it. We let ourselves keep birthday money. That's the rule.

This is the total we owe at the end of each month, after all the payments and the interest. The "paid down" column is how much the total went down, not how much we sent in (we sent in more, because of interest). Updated after each month's statements come in. September is in.

Total paid down since July 1998: $14,300.
(That's 61% of the way. Amy did the percentage. Steve checked it.)

• The boat. See above. Steve is fine. Steve is fine.
• Cable TV. $34 a month. We get four channels with the rabbit ears, and Josh has discovered PBS. We do miss the Weather Channel.
• Eating out. This was the big one, bigger than we thought. We went back through six months of statements and we were spending around $280 a month on restaurants and takeout and lunches. It's now about $40, and that's the pizza Steve brings home from work when an order gets cancelled.
• Steve's Friday and Saturday nights. He's delivering pizza. Amy's home with Josh. We have Sunday.
• The vacation. We were going to go to the Wisconsin Dells in August. We went to Amy's parents' lake place instead, for free, and it was honestly fine.
• New clothes for the grown-ups. Fifteen months and counting. Amy bought one pair of work shoes when the old ones went. Josh gets what he needs because he keeps growing, the little rat.
• The second car. Sold Steve's old truck in February for $900. He takes the bus to work and Amy drives the sedan. It is annoying about twice a month.
• Buying lunch. Both of us pack. Steve eats a lot of peanut butter.
• Magazines, the book club, the CD club. All the little $12-a-month things. There were seven of them. That's $84 a month we didn't know we were spending.

We decided early that if the plan made us miserable we would quit it, so we kept a few things on purpose.

• The $60 fun money. $30 each, a month, no questions asked. Steve's goes to fishing stuff. Amy's goes to paperbacks and the occasional lunch out with her sister. Don't cut this. This is what keeps you from blowing $200 on a bad week.
• Josh's T-ball and his swimming lessons. He didn't get us into this. He's not paying for it.
• The Internet. $19.95 a month. We argued about this one. It won because Amy uses it for the clinic schedule and because, well, you're reading this.
• One night out a month. Dinner at the place with the $6.95 spaghetti and a movie at the second-run theater. Total about $25. We look forward to it like Christmas.
• The dog. This wasn't a discussion.
• Church, and the little we give. Also not a discussion.

We are not financial people. Steve works at a printing plant and Amy is a medical assistant. We have no business telling anyone what to do with their money, and there are a lot of books out there by people who do. So this isn't advice. It's just the stuff we noticed, in case it's useful.

• Adding it all up was the worst night and the most important one. We had both been not-looking for years.
• The budget only worked once it was on paper, on the cupboard door, where we both saw it every day. The one on the computer didn't work. Out of sight, out of mind.
• Paying off the small card first was "wrong" and it was the best thing we did. We needed to win once.
• Interest is a bill you pay for nothing. Once you see it as a bill, you get mad at it, and mad is useful.
• We told people. Amy's parents, Steve's brother, the neighbors. It was embarrassing for about a week. After that it helped, because nobody invites you to the expensive restaurant anymore and nobody asks why you're not going to the Dells.
• We fought about money more in the first three months of the plan than in the whole six years before it, and less since than ever. You have to have the fights to get to the other side of them.
• The first month there's $1,000 in the checking account that isn't spoken for is a strange, strange feeling. We didn't know what to do with ourselves. We sent it to the MasterCard.

The MasterCard should be gone by November. When it is, the last card comes out of the freezer and gets cut up, and we're going to take a picture, and if the film ever gets developed we'll try to get it scanned at Amy's brother-in-law's office and put it up here.

After that it's just the car, and we'll be throwing $1,000 a month or better at a 9.5% loan. By our math that's the summer of 2000, right about on schedule. Then Steve quits the pizza job (he says), we start putting the same money into savings, and we'll have to figure out what people do with their Friday nights.

If you're doing something like this, we'd love to hear from you. Not for advice, just for company.