Greetings!

Obviously, there are a ton of personal finance blogs on the Web, more than I could possibly ever read (although that doesn't stop me from adding as many as I can to my handy-dandy Google Reader). Why start another one?

I personally feel that while there are plenty of blogs and sites out in the Internether, there will be very few that meet the needs of everyone in the planet, much less that of the United States. I'm a thirtysomething freelance journalist/writer/aspiring novelist; a first-generation Filipino-American; a happy wife; a passionate feminist; a fashionista with a penchant for fancy designer handbags; and generally an all-around nice person. Some PF blogs appeal to me, others leave me cold. I'm fascinated by the stock market but don't really have the patience to plow through intricate books and Web tutorials to learn more about how to play there. I am generally frugal but could use the motivation to keep me on the straight and narrow path to a debt-free existence. I also serve as the Chief Financial Officer in my little household of two and am eager to learn more about how to achieve wealth on a decidedly middle-class income.

There will likely be few (if any) who read this and will relate to any part of my identity. However, one thing we all probably have in common is that we all wish to achieve a debt-free, prosperous yet frugal, and happy existence. I began this blog in the hopes that it will serve as a very useful tool towards making that happen.

Did I mention that we have a lot of debt? B. (my super-gorgeous husband) is in the medical field and has a very good salary, but we also accumulated a lot of debt during the time he went back to school to get his second degree (his first was in History) and I worked full-time to support the two of us. I didn't earn a lot, and I must admit, my then-not-so-frugal mindset didn't help either. We finished off 2006 (the year B. graduated) with nearly $16,000 in debt on three credit cards: Best Buy (about $800), a Wells Fargo Financial Bank Visa (about $5,000), and a Fidelity Investments MasterCard (about $10,000).

B. got a job here in our current city (we moved here from Dallas), so we moved in the fall of 2006. Soon after, I took a full-time administrative job and immediately poured nearly all of my earnings into paying off our credit card debt. Within nine months, we'd cut the debt to about $6,000. I then dialled down my job to focus exclusively on my writing (features, columns, essays, all for the local paper and various magazines and newspapers around the country and on the Web). I'd started working on my first novel as well as on a play and wanted to devote as much time as possible to it. I now work one day a week at my employer and spend the rest of my time writing, researching, blogging, and taking care of the household.

We still, however, have about $4500 in debt left. However, with careful money management and better adherence to our New Frugality mindset, we hope to have all of that paid off by the end of the summer, after which time we can accelerate our savings to buy our first home.

Whew! Okay, that's a lot to swallow in the first post. But I did want to at least provide a better picture of where we are so that I can establish a baseline for achieving our goals and also introduce myself to whoever out there is interested in reading the opinion of yet another personal finance blogger!

I don't claim to be an expert, nor do I think I'll ever be. But I do want to achieve wealth and prosperity someday, and as a writer, I'm a big believer in the power of words -- both reading them and writing them -- to help us in achieving our goals. If nothing else, this blog will at least hold me accountable for my actions, as I now face the possibility that I will be living my financial life for the world to see.

M.