My Inaugural Post!

This is my first foray into the world of blogging! So what is the "Great Paper Chase" and what is it about? Well, as the description mentions, it is about my experiences with money, life and the like. The Great Paper Chase is about constantly chasing after the almighty dollar a.k.a "paper" and convincing it to make itself at home in my bank accounts. My hope is to talk about the struggles and successes associated with getting out of debt, building up my net worth and resisting the constant peer pressure from the media to buy what I don't really need. By the way, that last item is a doozy!

Anyway, I've tried keeping a journal, but the results were less than stellar. So I hope that using this blog might help me become a bit more disciplined with managing my finances and reducing the spending. Maybe even allow me to be more accountable for my financial actions. I have found that with my own reading of others experiences has help me while going through my own my trials and tribulations. So if my comments can help others... all the better!

So who am I? I am an early 30's girl. I refuse to say 30-something. I"m not mentally there yet and don't plan to be until I'm ready. (obviously, I have other issues the contend with that are probably the subject of another blog) I live and work in the "rainy city" and I have two children. I don't have all of my financials ready for posting, but I hope to gather up the specifics soon. Particularly, the debt balances. I am currently on the hook for roughly 14k in CC debt, 14k in auto loan debt, 40k in student loan debt as well as a very large unmentionable mortgage balance.

There was a time when those figures would stop my heart and cause me to start suffocating. However, I do have some positives to go along with those numbers. So I am currently still breathing and the heart is still pumping.

I wish I could say that my goal was to become completely debt free by 2010, but the reality is that I am not shooting for that right now. The near term goal is to eliminate the CC debt and auto loan while moving the needle on the student loans.

So why isn't being debt-free in 2010, the ultimate goal right now? Well like so many others, I have some other obligations that will come due rather quickly. College for one of my daughters is so close I can taste the tuition bills. We'll get into why I'm just now doing something about that in another post.