Ten Years. Minimum.

Our debt happened in the good, old fashioned, American way: We earned it. Here are some of the myths we took part in:

• College is worth the money
• Private schools are better than public school
• YOU HAVE TO HAVE [whatever]
• You absolutely MUST have the biggest goddamned wedding that you can pay for. Not afford, mind you, but pay for
• Being poor is the best way to be creative
• Hanging out in bars is fun
• Workaday life is slavery, not working is freedom

I think, in time, I'll tackle each one of these with a blog post. I'll call the series Money Myths, or something else just as hokey. Well, maybe I just won't call it anything, and just label it Personal Finance.

The point is, we bought in, and we paid up, but with other people's money. Here's some things we can't do, because the long money is too tight:

• Start a family. I know, I know, plenty of people have had families with much less money and much more debt, but our goal is to get solid before we have kids
• Buy a house. Debt to income ration = too damned high! [insert meme here]
• Work as a teacher. This one is mine, not Kim's. I'm not taking a 50% pay cut at a time when the benefits that make teaching even remotely attractive are being cut across the country
• Buy health insurance for Kim. My work covers mine, hers doesn't.

That's not going to stop us, though, from living in our own way. We've worked it out so that, while we're digging out of the 10-year hole, we've got a pretty good life. No more bullet-points, but we build furniture and other projects, I write, we work out and go for walks. It's all quite fun fun. But over it hangs this hideous dead cloud, this idea that old age will be 10 years closer by the time I'm able to even start saving a significant amount towards retirement.


What do we do? We follow the Get Rich Slowly ideal: Try to get more money, while trying to spend less of it. Still, without some kind of major change, we're looking at 10 more years. Minimum.