Regardless of what the economy is doing, being in a financial mess is never an easy situation to endure. Having bills and expenses pile up can be daunting and makes maintaining a clear mind almost impossible. No one is 100% rational under huge amounts of stress. However, that situation can be easily fixed in one simple step. Budgeting.

To what lengths would you go to become financially free? The answer for us? Living on $27,000/year for four years, cutting out everything we didn't need in our lives, and becoming laser focused on getting out of debt.

At first, it was hard to breathe or think about the future when facing $120,000 in debt (student loans, car debt, and one credit card). I still vividly remember my husband saying, "We can do this." He had laid everything out on paper, all the numbers neatly in charts to show us we could be debt free in 2.5 to 3 years.