Two Years Ago, or the Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Two years ago I started this blog in the hopes that I would have something meaningful to say to people who were post-bankruptcy. I was planning to write on post-bankruptcy survival, and how hard it is to get past the experience. I started out well, wrote a number of what I consider to be decent posts, and then I stopped writing.

I'm not sure why I stopped. I guess I ran out of things to say, and then basically forgot about the blog. It wasn't until this evening, when I was surfing around the Blogosphere that I realized I'd abandoned this blog two years ago.

I wasn't even sure if I remembered the passwords. Surprisingly, I did, and Blogger very nicely converted the blog to the the new version of Blogger, and here I am.

So two years later, I owe more money, but my credit scores are much higher, and my cash flow is dramatically better. My standard of living is better, and I have more money in my retirement accounts.

Debt	2005 Balance	2007 Balance
Credit Cards	1,141	3,545
401(k) Loans	17,706	0
Mortgage	180,350	216,789
Auto Loan	0	13,567
Total	$199,197	233,901

But I won't lie, it's disturbing to see how much our overall debt has grown in the past two years. We now owe $34,704 more than we owed two years ago, including our mortgage debt.

Of course our house is worth more than what we owe on it, so things aren't completely dreadful. But I have to admit, that I've had plenty of squabbles with my spouse about spending and the fact that we are deeper in debt than ever.

But this news really, really, really bothers me. It bothers me that we are worse off than we used to be, and it bothers me that I've managed to let this problem slide for two years. In early 2006, we refinanced our house, to pay off the loans against my retirement accounts and to pay self-employment taxes due to the IRS, and it seems like we've made little forward progress.

Of course we do have a few things to show for it. My retirement account is worth nearly $100,000, and we are no longer driving a car that wheezes and leaks oil and coolant wherever it goes.

So it's not all bad.

But I realize, we are working a trend that is not in our favor.

Even though the big contract that I mentioned is still going two years later, and we expect it to continue for at least another two to three years, I have that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that we aren't doing the right thing.

Debt, with perhaps the exception of mortgage debt, is pretty much universally bad. We need to start turning this ship around.