First Post

I have been reading many a financial blog recently....and well, here I am on my own Journey. Time to be truthful, time to buckle down, and time to learn.

I am 25 and I want a house. I have been concerned about saving for a while now, but never really knowing what to do....and not really wanting to give up the pleasures the spending a few extra bucks here and there bring.

I have played around with budgeting, but never got serious.

Some first goals:
get a budget together
pay off car loan

I bought my car new...I can't believe my father encouraged me to do that. I have driven the heck out of it and have put 75,000 miles on it in 3 years. It has been a great time, though! Right now my payments are 376. I threw an extra 1,000 bucks in last month and hope to pay a total of 1000 dollars each month. Right now there is $7,368.34 left.

I don't have any credit card debt to speak of. I do have accounts in bad standing that will be off my report in about a year. From a horrible ex who did horrible things, I paid off thousands of it and not knowing how the credit system worked at a young age of 22...they show up as charge offs when I paid the full amount. Current credit score...a poor-fair 696

Yes, plenty of mistakes in my background, but I have been pretty good since...not good enough as to save as much as I should have.

Here we go.