First, congratulations on your sobriety, and on getting your mental illness under control. My stepfather battles both and it's not easy at all.

A lot of people dismiss it because of its religious overtones, but Dave Ramsey's financial advice is generally very good. He advocates an asset based, zero balance budget technique designed to get you weaned off of credit and within a few years, you'll have a stable nest egg and a good platform to build a retirement savings portfolio, not to mention a paid-for car and house in some situations (that's where we'll be in the next few years, the cars will be paid off this year and we just started the program a year ago). It's too much to go into in depth here, but I'd recommend getting his Financial Peace books as a start.

Thanks Morgan! It has not been easy as you say, but it certainly beats the alternative. :)

I've had a quick look at the book you recommended and it's gone on my "to read" list. I'd like to think that I've gotten rather good at ignoring religious overtones with my time spent in Alcoholics Anonymous.

> I'd like to think that I've gotten rather good at ignoring religious overtones...

And honestly, it's not that bad; as usual, the biggest critics are the people who haven't actually read his books and just make assumptions instead. He even says in some of his videotaped seminars that if you're not religious, instead of tithing to your church you should donate the same amount to your favorite charity.

Very similar to Ramsey's advice (as I understand it), I use and love YNAB, which encourages zero-balance budgeting and a month of "buffer", which boils down to paying this month's income into next month's budget. There are no religious overtones as far as I can tell. It is designed for people working their way out from under debt (especially from credit cards), but it's very useful outside that use case as well!

YNAB is nice for targeting savings goals as well, not just to get out of debt. Longterm goals like buying a house or car? Set a category for it and every month allocate $xxx to it. Have an upcoming trip? Create a category for it (Wedding in GA) with subcategories like hotel, clothing (purchasing, renting, cleaning, altering, it's a catchall), fuel, gift, misc. Let's say (real example) I have a 4 hour drive, in my car that's 1 tank of gas for there and back, about $40, call it $50 to be safe. I allocate $5/month to the fuel category for this trip. Now when I take the trip in November I don't have to find $50, it's already been "spent" in my allocations. And at the end of the trip I can take my savings (if any) and push it into other categories (a general trip fund, an extra dinner out that month, whatever). Then you just hide the "Wedding in GA" category and the spending is still there and tracked for historical purposes, but you don't see it again.

Actually, its medium-to-long-term savings goal functionality is the only thing I don't like about YNAB. It's good for the sort of "save $5/month for something that will eventually cost an indeterminate amount of money" use case, but not as good for the "I want to have exactly $X saved at exactly Y date, a single time", like for a car or house down payment. To do that, you have to manually figure out X / (Y - NOW) / 12, and then make sure to carry it forward each month, and cancel it after the time comes.

Hardly a death knell, but I think it could do better to encourage closed-ended known-amount savings than it does!

It could be easier, but it is an opinionated piece of software. Their main focus is budgeting one month out (this and next month). However, for calculating the amount to allocate each month for a longterm goal they do have a convenient tool. Once you enter a value (say $4800 for easy math), type '/12<enter>' and it'll replace $4800 with $400. Then once you have income to start budgeting next month you can copy that over.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, it isn't hard to do at all, and I think it reflects their focus on people living month-to-month, that just isn't me. I love that it is opinionated and that its opinions are so universally good, it's just one style of saving I wish were better encouraged by the interface.

Dave Ramsey's system is a great starting point.

It's not the most efficient thing out there, but it's psychologically effective -- designed to make small steps that build on each other. You can often do things more efficiently, but the other side of that coin is that it's a lot less efficient if you get discouraged and stop working toward financial stability. So he has you take little steps -- control spending, create a buffer to prevent new debts from forming, pay off small debts, use the boost in cash flow from getting rid of each debt to pay more on the next, and eventually own your house, car, and some long-term investments. (I apologize if I've gotten things out of order or misrepresented anything in his system; it's been a while since I've looked at it.)

> pay off small debts, use the boost in cash flow from getting rid of each debt to pay more on the next

http://unbury.me/

I believe this was posted here months ago, but this is helpful for examining different options of clearing out a set of debts. Helps with considering the option of paying off highest interest versus lowest balance. The former likely saves money, but the latter can help psychologically. (Ah! I'm finally free of that $1k @ 3% car loan, now I can focus on that $8k @ 16% CC debt!)

First off, congratulations, that's a pretty deep hole you've dug yourself out of. Where are you located?

Thanks Jacques! It's nice to hear from you, I've enjoyed your writing over the years.

I've spent most of my life in Vancouver BC. I've recently relocated to California to work for a startup.

If you ever make it to Europe consider yourself invited.