Dustin Taylor
Taylor, 24, uses Google Calendar to create a strict meal plan and grocery list for every day of the week.
Strategy: Plan ahead
Advice: Sit down each weekend and project upcoming expenses.
My wife and I paid off $21,000 of debt in less than seven months.
When I was about to get married it finally hit me that I couldn't live the single life anymore. And since my wife didn't bring any debt into the relationship, getting control of my debt turned into a challenge, because I'm very competitive.
We found creative ways to budget. One small thing that really helped was creating a strict meal plan using Google calendar. We would give ourselves $60 for two weeks and would sit down every Sunday and plan meals and grocery lists for each day of the week. Little things like that kept us out of trouble.
Groceries, rent, utilities and tithes to our church were really our only expenses. So budgeting these over a two-week period rather than a monthly period really helped us save money.
We did things like go to the dollar theater, we stopped going out to eat and started using the library instead of buying books. I also ditched the Audi A4 I was convinced I really needed only a year earlier. I was sad to see it go, but it definitely helped cut away some of the debt.
This makes us sound like we have a bland life, but it makes us focus on what we need and what we really enjoy.
NEXT: Melody Brooke
Last updated October 21 2010: 12:29 PM ET
