As you can see, last year all I wanted was to pay off our credit cards. Wow! We got so close to getting them all paid off. I’m not upset that there is still one more, instead I am thrilled. That means that we were still able to pay off 4 out of 5 credit cards. I will just add the last one to 2011’s goals.

One of the biggest things we did to help ourselves financially was down-sizing. We had a HUGE 3-bedroom, 2 bath town-home apartment with an attached garage. Unfortunately, it was more than we could afford. That meant every month we kept getting further and further into debt; even a little debt is bad.

So, we made a decision to down-size and save ourselves. We ended up moving into a tiny little 2 bedroom and 2 bath apartment with no garage. It certainly was quite a dramatic change for us, but we are doing our best to make it work. We gave a lot of stuff away because our previous place was already packed. We decided that we would stay in our new tiny apartment until we were finally able to buy our first home. Still not sure when that will be….

How much did we save from down-sizing? In 9 months, because we moved in the end of February, we saved ourselves:

$1,746 in rent
$875 in PUD (heating that other place was just nuts)
$270.00 in water bills (which are included in rent at our new apartment)
$50 in Pet Rent (which would have been charged at the old apartment)

Bottom Line= $2,941.00

How did you do on your financial goals from 2010? What were they?