Who am I?

I'd like to maintain semi-anonymity here, since the amount of debt I have is a little staggering and is also fairly personal. However, I will say that I'm a 26 year old woman with a Bachelor's degree and 2 years of law school under my belt. The law school wasn't my thing, so now I'm working as a paralegal. My job is great, and the pay is pretty good. Sadly, I spent all those years of schooling racking up debt, so now I need to dig myself out of that hole.

The blog title is inspired by an episode of The Simpsons, where, when trying to dig their way out of a hole, one of the townsfolk yells "Dig up, you idiots!" I've been committed to this debt removal since November 2007. In that time, I've cleared out a furniture loan of $960 and a smallish credit card debt of about $600. My remaining debt is listed in the sidebar. The credit card debt consists of two cards, both in a 0% promotional rate. The large one has a balance of about $9,000 and the remainder is on a smaller one.

Saving is not so hot right now, with my emergency fund at only $430. I recently needed to take $1,000 out of it for some emergency repairs, and have been working at building it back. The goal for the emergency fund right now is to keep it at one month of take home pay. Once I reach that goal, the bi-weekly savings ($200) will move over to debt repayment.

Currently I'm doing pretty well slowly chipping away at debt. My new plan, which I will be documenting here, is to work on cutting one frivolous expense a month and putting those savings straight towards debt payment. I'm starting May's goal now, since the end of the month is getting close. The goal? Stop buying soda at work. In an average week, I buy 2 cans of diet soda a day from the machine at work at 65 cents a pop. On top of that, I usually buy 2 20oz bottles from the eatery across the street for about $1.50 each. That's $9.50 a week spent on soda, pretty atrocious. I'm starting out trying to pretty much just give it up, but if I really miss it, then I'll buy it at the grocery store much cheaper and bring it in. Assuming I manage to stop completely, that will add up to an extra $494 a year in debt reduction! Just from not drinking soda! The payments will be made on a weekly basis. I'm keeping a check list on my desk at work, where I will mark down any sodas I buy. At the end of the week, I'll set up an electronic payment for the amount of money saved.