"I must have raised you right"

No. I don't think that is a true statement.

My mother said that to me the other day. She was amazed that I had money in savings and had been paying off debts and had not bounced a check. My mom thinks nothing of bouncing checks actually. To her its just a part of life. She rarely knows how much she has in her account, she doesn't keep track of it and she doesn't use her internet banking to verify her funds.

When she said this to me, I thought, thats not it. She raised me poor. I grew up knowing the value of money, we didn't have much. We did without, we knew what having money meant. My siblings and I are all pretty good with our money. We may be considered tight fisted although we do spend it when we have it. I make sure my bills are paid before I spend money on toys. I've found that doing things this way gives me more money to spend on the fun stuff. I recently built a computer that if I had purchased prebuilt would have been close to 3k. I paid a total of $600 for it.

Growing up poor made me realize that money doesn't grow on trees. That hard work goes a long way. Doing without things that you don't really need, eventually pays off.

I recently started school. One of my previous student loans automatically went into deferment. I didn't ask them to but they did anyway. I plan on still paying it every month, because I don't want to have any debts on my slate.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm excited to be debt free. I have one huge debt that is a huge stupid tax. It was a van that was voluntarily surrendered and I still owe 13k on it. And that was after the auction. My current plan has that debt paid off in two years. I hope to have it out of here sooner. Thats actually the next debt I need to work on I think. I'll have to recheck what I have.

I use open office and I found a wonderful template on their website for debt-reduction. Very well organized I think with lots of good tips.

I"m using my tax refund to slowly pay off all debts. I put 1k in savings. I'll be posting March's budget in a few minutes. Rent had gone up, but utilities will be going down since the weather is getting nicer.