The Good Life on a Budget

• Posted by JvW on May 13th, 2009 filed in Blogging, Debt

… I can write for the first time!

About a year ago, my husband’s company shut its doors. Due to the legal issues until they were officially closed, I couldn’t talk about it in a public forum (such as the Internet). At the time, everything that was going on with the company was greatly affecting our finances and it is ALL I wanted to talk about. Sure, I threw together some posts but it was always lurking in my thoughts.

Now they have legally closed and I am free to discuss the difficulties surrounding that chapter of our lives. But first, an update of the state of our finances.

We paid off our credit card debt in 2008 (just barely!). After that, we began to build our emergency fund and house funds. When the company officially closed in February 2009, their promissory notes were called in. As a partner, my husband was responsible for 1/3 of the amount due, or about $11,500. In the two months since we had paid off our debt, we had $4200 in savings.

We had to turn back to the credit cards to make up the difference and took advantage of a 0% offer. I am adding this to the sidebar as “Business Debt” because it’s not quite the same as the original credit card debt. This is not a result of us being stupid with money and using credit cards like they were cash. The company, while it has closed, was a huge part of where we are now, and not in a negative way.

We have also made some progress on the other debts, which are now updated in the sidebar. Now for more progress!