I am fuming over debt today....   Compared to so many in the U.S., we have very little, but any debt is too much, and I've had enough.  We got a letter in the mail today from our credit union (which recently underwent some changes and so far I don't see them to be favorable).  Apparently the monthly payment on our installment loan has increased, and this letter was actually a late notice!!!  Ummm....could someone have maybe notified us of this increase?  This is the first we're hearing of it!  Can they even do that??  My DH has the payment automatically deposited into the CU account every week, to cover the payment and a little left over which goes into savings.  Boy are they gonna hear from him on Monday morning with an earful.  I'm sorry but you don't just increase a payment without ANY notice but the late notice!  That's just rotten.

So, that put me on the warpath to eliminate our debt.  I grabbed all the medical bills out of the desk drawer and started writing checks!  There are only 3 bills in there...WHY have I let them sit?!?  I paid off the smallest bill in full, paid half of the second one, and made an installment on the largest bill, which is from the hospital.  Next week I will pay off the 2nd half of the second bill, and make another installment on the hospital bill, and keep making weekly installments and I will have that gone by mid-summer.  Our tax refund next winter will wipe out the rest of this silly credit union loan and my DH's credit card, and then we'll just have my credit card which will then be below $1000, and at that point all my effort can go into paying that off by next summer.

I'm putting this plan into action a) because it's no good being in debt!, but also b) because we're forming another plan in all this moving and job-change hoopla that we've been going through this year (you can read up on that under my Camp Quest category if you so desire).   DH is becoming more settled at his current job, much to his dismay some days!  It pays well, has great benefits, and the bottom line is that we are quite comfortable in our little rural NH life.  We suffer badly from wanderlust, but that's nothing a yearly vacation can't cure.  There are certainly worse places to raise kids these days!  We are going to sit on our plans for the rest of this year.  Come early '08, we may give the camp quest one more try, but if not or if it doesn't fly, our plan is just to stay here and that's that.  We won't stay in our current house, partly because the taxes are just too high and ever-climbing, and partly because if we do stay in NH, we'd like to get ourselves a couple or 3 acres and finally have a real homestead - I want chickens and a couple of ponies, a sheep and an alpaca (DH's request!) and a much bigger garden than I've been able to have here.  We could get into a nice manufactured home or older (but decent) farmhouse for less than what this house will eventually sell for, so we'd still come out ahead.

Life finally seems to have some direction!