Ok, got everything current as far as stats and charts, once a month on the 8th, the chart in the far right will be updated. I'll also post a monthly recap that'll break out the debt by who I owe what too. I'm thinking of doing a weekly income/outgoing recap, but even that can be done monthly, I'll see what time permits. I also made minor tweaks to the logo and title of the site. One other thing I'll incorporate since I have a firm pay off date in mind, 1/1/13, each month I need to post a where I'm at, how far I need to go sort of post. On a grand scale my debt pay off breaks down like this:

To pay off 53121.83 in 5 years, or 60 months, I need to pay out @ least 885.37/mo (not factoring interest charges) on average, but each year I must reduce my debt by 10.5k a year. So my goal in year one is to reduce my overall debt and owe 42497.39 by 12/31/08.

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A bit off topic, don't feel like writing up another post. What prompted me to finally update my states was the arrival of my state tax bill, a total of $1463.09 and it looks like they freaking want a check, yea, I'll get right on that *sigh*

I'll give them a call before the week is out, if I don't pay the 4 notices by the 15th, penalties will be assessed.

Truth be told, I'm glad this saga is over, though I'm dreading like hell 4/15, I guess I'll also wrap things up w/my EA this week and pray to the debt be gone gods he'll have mercy on me and just end up billing me the retainer for the last few weeks of work.

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I also went back to my full disclosure cc post and added paypal buyers credit. Must be b/c I don't have a physical card, I completely blocked out I had it. But it's been added. I'll do a full disclosure on my loans and taxes in the next few posts...

Nope, that's not a typo. I haven't updated this category in the longest. Truth be told, the ginormous debt chart on the right is enough to remind me of the hole I'm in, I don't need to rub my nose in my own mess @ the end of each month. So I'm going to temporarily put this category/update on hold till further notice.

Now that the credit cards are paid in full, the poor little monthly progress chart is empty, well not for long.

I've filled it up w/the loans, which means for about 15 days I lived in pure bliss of having nothing but 0's only to see it all filled back up again. *sigh*

No worries...I felt the same way when I filled it up w/the credit card debt. :\

Once I get that car loan paid off, which'll be a huge milestone, I can ramp up payments to the Direct Student Loans debt.

Here's the loan progress chart from February 06:

I'll post this monthly chart towards the of the month.

Let this serve as a test entry!

Update @ 11:40: YaY! All is working. I also took the time to fix the archives, which weren't showing up. Sorry netscape users, I see some misalignment here and there. It'll have to keep for now, and well for the immediate future. Ha! And already it's nipped 2 pieces of comment spam, to which I'll say the 24 hour headache this upgrade has been is totally worth it :D

I am also going to turn off comment moderation as the spam seems to automatically not show up.

Whew, that was short. My hosting company helped me out by finding the incorrect permissions and I can post again. Mercy me, let installing this version be worth it by ending that comment spam foolishness for once and for all. Thanks for being patient ;)

Update @ 10:30pm: Still having problems since the upgrade, I have to manually make the files show up, which is going to get old fast. You'll see the front page just fine, but if you click the link for this entry, you'll see the 500 error. I'll be offline a bit while I get it all sorted out, but at least wanted to have an update here and a working page vs. Bart Simpsons face...lol

I just upgraded to Version 3.33 of Movable Type, testing to make sure entries & comments post okay. Hopefully this'll put an end to the comment spam I continue to get hit with.

Comments have been open what? 2 - 3 weeks? and I'm already getting slammed w/comment spam? *sigh*

Where is the woodwork that these roaches crawl out from? And where I can get a can of comment Raid?

Anyway, for the time being comments are being moderated so that the spam doesn't show up immediately. Sometime this month I'm going to upgrade to the current version of MovableType that'll automatically weed out that crap.

As promised, comments are now open. I'm a financial newbie, be gentle :)

Having this site up for well over a year, I've stayed away from comments. Trust me, I get quite enough on my other blogs. Plus, money is a touchy subject. I didn't want to get nagged over a poor financial decision or to be reminded why I need 401ks and should invest in high yield bonds ::eyes glazing over::

Yet, I have a better outlook. Starting sometime next month I'll open this site up for comments. Not so much b/c I feel I need advice on what to do, but I feel there are some questions as to the behind the scenes things I'm doing and maybe it'll help others in debt too. Will be nice hearing from y'all :)

Gleaned from aonther blog, in one of the columns, I'm going to list out my debt, to match the overall chart. The diff is, it'll link to the actual debt and when there's been a payoff, I'll update the sidebar to reflect it as well. Each day this week, I'll highlight my debts.

Well...be on national tv @ least. I got an email last week and offered to post the same offer here for anyone interested.

I am a producer with a new talk show debuting this fall in New York City. I'm doing research on shopping addictions, specifically women whose shopping addictions are affecting their lives. If you are experiencing this or know someone who is, I would love to talk to you. This could be your chance to share your story with the rest of America!!! Feel free to call me at our toll free number: 1.888.372.2569 (ext. 4294), or you can email me at newnytalkshow@yahoo.com. Thank you!!!

If you make it on national tv, be sure to give me a shout out ;)

Last weekend, since I've been dusting off the keyboards to blog here more regularly, I found a few new links that's been pointing to me so I added them to my blogroll/resources section. I always like finding new sites, not b/c I enjoy seeing other people in debt, I just like not feeling so alone and so screwed.

I've added:

In the resources:
pfblogs.org
pfblogs.com

Personal Finance Blogs
Kirby on Finance
Make Love, Not Debt
2¢ Worth

If you have a finance related site, especially a personal finance blog, hit me up, I'll add you to my blogroll.

Over the weekend, I'm going to flesh out my 3 website ideas and next week will post my final decision on if I'll take the plunge or not. I'll also write about The Coin Project. Have a good weekend!

Man, leave this site for a few days and all hell breaks loose. Long story short: one of my scripts stopped working, ended up screwing up my error logs, maxing out my bandwidth, a site with about 10 visitors a day, 5 of which is moi, gets shut down for overusing bandwidth. My hosting company was nice enough to comp me an extra gig so I could check it out and I have disabled the script. Problem solved.

Back later

So, yea, there are others out there, just like me, in debt blogging their way out. Spent some time tonight setting up a blogroll of personal finance bloggers and financial links and resources. Tomorrow I'll have news on my $100 investment experiment. I need to set up a tracking system to keep on top of things. I posted an ad and got about 10 replies today (yikes!).

Ok, I started this as an offshoot to my weight loss site, but the more I thought about it, I'm going to break it off and set up another domain. I can get one for under $5 and I have another domain set up with monthly hosting I don't actively use, so the monthly hosting is a default bill.

Why it's own domain? I want to dedicate a lot of time and pages to this get out of debt project and my weight loss site is almost bursting @ the seams and each month I'm on pins & needles when it comes to going over bandwidth. Thi sway I'm using bandwidth I already have in place and I can make this site more independent from anything weight related.

As for the direction, today I got all the templates set up and all that's left is to start is to lay out my plan and get to work. For the first few weeks I'm just going to post about my current situation, but in a few months, based on my experience, I'll venture into posting more resources and deals I come across.

@ least that's the idea, we'll see how it goes.

Ok, after a few redesigns, I settled on a good looking layout and trimmed some misc pages. Here on out it'll be really streamlined and basic. I just have to do the individual, archives & category pages and I'm all set.

Then I can get to the point of this whole site, paying off that @$#$%$ debt.

Getting sub templates set up now.

I've just finished a quick & dirty layout and am working out the MT kinks and getting the layout in place. It should take me the rest of this week to finish all the templates and I hope by next weekend to have it all working so I can make use of it.

Ok main index is done and working.

To do:
Tweak Style sheet
set up includes