And on the 6th day...Sal created a blog

Welcome to Have I Grown Up? a blog that will focus on personal finance, frugality and future goals. I'm fairly new to this, so my attention may stray.

Let me start at what I consider the beginning of what led me to this blog:

June 2006, stuck in low-paying, self-esteem denying job where nothing was ever enough, and people could unleash their anger and frustrations freely on me whenever they wanted, I broke down into tears when I arrived home--again. I had been in this incredibly unfulfilling workplace for 4.5 years, actively searching for new employment without luck for two of those years. The next day, starting to hate myself for the pity I was wallowing in, I opened the phone book to "Resume Services" and called the first place on the list.

Two months later Mr. was back in school and we were suddenly more broke than the previous year. We spent more than we earned, so the last week before a paycheck was painful. That fall we tracked every little expense to see where we could cut back. The credit card debt had been slowly going away for years, but every year we were racking up more student loans and had just bought ourselves a money pit because of our strong desire to own our own home. Some months, there were arguments about money becasue the Mr. & I coudn't agree on how it should be spent, and hated talking about it to begin with!

After some hard work, soul-searching, and more hard work, I began a new job in April 2007 that is everything my previous job was not. Our credit card debt should be completely wiped away by June 2008. We now have a decent emergency fund, and we have begun saving for retirement. The Mr. & I are now a team, supporting and encouraging each other, and are closer than we have ever been. And I have learned a lot about myself, Mr., money, the environment, and home remodeling in the last year.