Got here by luck, intending to stay by judgement.

Having spent a chirpy hour this afternoon paying off 50k of credit card debts I actually find myself pretty much Debt Free, and so am ambling over to the more cerebral side of MSE Town to join in with the MFW cause.

I have had a completely appalling attitude to money which has seen us carry ludicrously high levels of debts on a collection of loans and cards for years, making minimum payments, robbing Peter to pay Paul and then mugging Paul the next day to shake him down and grab his loose change, driving cars we can't afford and having to service a 100% mortgage that we got a couple of weeks before NR went boom.

But then a couple of months ago I rung up a broker just to see if there were any remortgage options and despite the fact that even Vanquis turned me down for a credit card the other month, some bright young thing on the end of the phone patiently took down all the details of my debts and managed to squire me a 5 year fixed rate beauty for not much more than I'm currently paying, and a resultant chunk of change of 50k - meaning we're not going to paying off minimum payments on our 15 card/storecard/loan accounts and so should actually have a bit of money to spare.

And now all the debt is tied to the house, it's kinda more personal. And so I want rid of it - and rather than celebrating removing our heads from the jaws of the lion by demolishing copious wine, I have been playing with an overpayment calculator - and if I can throw an extra grand a month at the mortgage, it'll be done in a decade. Not that I'm quite sure where this mythical grand is going to come from, but I'm going to have fun trying to find it.