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At 09:38 PM 11/25/97 -0600, you wrote:
> ... How did you all get started---especially
>how do you go about working towards retiring debt and incorporating the
>other elements into your lifestyle---it seems like the little changes I
>make don't make much of a difference ...
>Cindy
>
After we returned from spending most of a year living (very cheaply!) in N.
India in 1988, our drop from being a 2-income household to 1 (my wife's)
made it obvious to all 5 of us that we had to make major reductions.
I can't say much about retiring debt (see other "YMOYL, Getting a Life:
Investment .."posts and earlier {[ is there an archive? ]}, other than that
by working hard at it, we reduced our annual spending from ~$28,000 to
under $19,000 so we had over $5,000 p.a. to retire debt with, each year.
Our method turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought in the first year
or two (during which I spread-sheeted every single purchase! see:
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/6783/macfamil.html );
all we had to do was ask ourselves _for_every_purchase_:
"do I/we really _need_ this?"
or,for transport: "what else can I combine this trip with?" (We still have
a car)
Plus, we only bought things actually written on a shopping list, and for
bigger items, put up with inconvenience for weeks (/months) before buying
or replacing.
David.
** http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/
David MacClement <davd@geocities.com>
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/6783/
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