“We’re debt free!” The words I long to be able to shout out loud. Hi, my name is Kara and I’m in debt.

Some of you know me as the editor of Simple Kids, but today I’m going to introduce myself to you as a person living in financial bondage. Or, to be less dramatic, I am a person trying to become debt free.

Our journey …

My family and I are in a significant amount of debt. Six figures significant, actually. That’s painful to write.

I won’t go into details, but we did some pretty dumb things with money in our 20′s, both as singles and as a young married couple.  We’re spending our 30′s trying to dig out of that debt.

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Written by money contributor Charlie Park.

So we’re now nine days into 2013. Just enough time for those New Year’s resolutions to have fallen by the wayside, right?

Or maybe you saw Tsh and Jeannett’s posts last week that encouraged you to think about goals for the year, rather than resolutions? If not, we’re going to look at that idea one more time, but with a focus on money.

Money is like fitness — it’s something that people often put off thinking about unless A) they’re about to go on vacation, B) they’ve had some sort of a scare, or C) it’s the new year.

If we harness that last one (yay, new year!) and wrap in Tsh’s point about goals-not-resolutions, we get a great four-point process to making 2013 a terrific year for you and your money. Let’s take a look at it.
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Today I’m over at Dave Ramsey, sharing one of our family’s favorite Christmas traditions. From the post:

“It felt SO GOOD to finally give abundantly to things we already cared about so passionately, especially during Christmas, when so many non-profits need it most. We could now add end-of-the-year giving to our holiday budget.

And even though we started giving more to charities and our church, we also thought it’d also be fun to shake things up a bit: we set aside $100 to give to a waiter or waitress. As a former waitress who worked her way through her twenties serving food, I have a soft spot for servers who do their job well. I know personally that it’s not an easy job.

It’s now one of our favorite ways to give during Christmas, and we look forward to this family tradition every year.”

Head here to read the whole post and to leave your thoughts, and then come back here, because I’ve got a giveaway for you!
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Written by money contributor Charlie Park.

One of the funnier “religious wars” I’ve seen when it comes to money is fighting between people in favor of “big wins” versus the people in favor of “little wins.”

“Little wins”-ers want to be as frugal as possible, to look for ways to save money wherever they can. “Big wins”-ers see those little steps as a waste of time. Instead, they look for a few big areas where they can save money, and focus their energy there.

Which of these approaches is better? Which one will do a better job of getting your family on solid financial footing?
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