Doles out rewards for debt payments
- Name: Zachary Cochran
- Age: 23
- Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Since [my wife] Kate is the free spirit and likes spending, I'm happy to take over the money management. My goal is to be fiscally responsible and free from debt. She [wants to go to Europe]. So we're working toward both our objectives -- mine to be debt-free and hers to go on a Europe trip.
To incentivize her to meet my goal, I've agreed to match what we pay in credit card debt and put it toward the amount we need for the Europe trip.
We're at the beginning still -- we started saving three to six months ago. We have about $9,550 in credit card debt, and we've probably paid off [$150 in debt and saved $150 in the Europe fund, and we hope to raise those amounts to $250 per month beginning in September].
Most recently, we've been working toward increasing our net income by pursuing new jobs. She got about a 15% raise and I got a 20% raise compared to the jobs we had before [when I was earning close to minimum wage].
But it's also things like, she has a gym membership she's not using, so I said that's 20 bucks [being wasted], so I'll give you a $20 iTunes gift card if you cancel it.
We [also] switched to primarily eating in, and Kate actually wanted to switch us to a Paleo diet (which consists mainly of meats and vegetables). The diet seems more expensive, since you're buying lean meats, nuts and berries, but overall it's certainly less expensive than what we were doing.
The month we started the Paleo diet there was a 10% drop in food spending. We were spending about $1,000 a month before, and now we're pushing below $900.
