I have a few things that are really going to help my wife and me get out of debt a lot more quickly. It's long, but I'm excited about it so fuck you.
Ok, scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr version if you must.
My wife and I started out in the red when we got married, barely survived, finally got to break even, and now we're in the green, but not by much, so watching debt barely move despite having a fairly bare-bones budget is frustrating.
The first of which was a fairly big (to us) raise for her. A $3,500 raise because her work finally offered her 40 hours a week instead of 36.5 even though the person whose job she took over worked 40 hours.
Next is I was finally able to get my car refinanced at a 2.1% lower interest rate on top of paying $114 less a month on minimum payments. That's a big asset because not only do I save money in interest, but I get more cash flow to pay off more important things like credit card debt. I couldn't get the car refinanced for the longest time because my credit card debt to limit ratio was too high, and my car had negative equity (still does, but not insanely negative enough to get no offers).
The last thing that is going to save me a bunch of money is the fact that I'm moving! My apartment complex wanted to jump my rent from $1,264 a month to $1,399 a month. I was able to negotiate that down to $1,335 a month, but, between the jump and insane charges for water, sewer, garbage, community area maintenance fees (~$130-135 a month for all those), my wife and I decided it was time to move. We started searching in June, but we didn't find any place that was a significant enough drop down in rent price to make it worth moving due to moving costs unless it was either a significantly smaller apartment or in a much worse neighborhood (we find drug needles right outside of our apartment door all the time as it is).
We also felt like we were discriminated against multiple times because we have a German Shepherd as an emotional support animal. Places that had "no pets" rules or breed restrictions have to lift those rules for us since we legally have an emotional support animal, but we felt like places we were clearly qualified for were choosing to not select us because of our dog. One property manager we were working with had a 2 bed, 1 bath in a neighborhood for $985 (low, flat W/S/G fees), and he kinda reminded me of Saul from Breaking Bad. Just a sleezy, nervous-sounding dude. He gave us the run-around and tried to say that our dog had to perform a duty in order to be a service animal. I told him that he's an emotional support animal and retains the same rights as a service animal when it comes to renting and owning according to the Fair Housing Act (public places are a different story). He said no one he talked to agreed with me. My wife and I felt like he would have rejected us for financial reasons or said that someone applied before us, so we just let him go. I hope someone files a discrimination case against him. Anyhow.
We had until July 11th to let our apartment complex know if we were going to move. We fount one place we liked a lot for $1,295 a month, W/S/G included, but, after doing a cost analysis, the moving costs on top of the increased commute length expenses made it so it would take about 5-6 months before we'd break even. So July 11th passed, but I didn't give up. I kept on searching, and I found a place close to that same place we liked for $1,025 a month, W/S/G included! For the greater Seattle area for a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment is a steal. And it's 1,200 sq ft, which is massive. Bigger than any 2 bed, 1 bath apartment I've ever heard of actually. Vaulted ceilings and sky light windows.
By the time we saw the posting online, it had only been posted for a few hours. I called the lady whose number was listed on the posting, and we told her we wouldn't be able to see the place for over a week due to us going on vacation to see family. She said to apply online sight unseen because it will be gone by then and that they refund app fees to anyone who doesn't get the apartment anyway, so it's risk free. While waiting between flights to our destination, I applied on my phone (not a fun process, btw). Days later, we were notified that we were the first people to have applied, and it's first come, first serve. We got approved, and I immediately began searching for someone to take over our apartment.
My complex would only let me out of my new lease renewal at this point if I did a lease transfer because they legally had me bound to a new lease because I missed the 20-day notice. Now I had the option to do a month-to-month, but rent for that month (August) with W/S/G would have been around $1,600, and the new place wanted me to take over the new place no later than August 1st, so I would have been paying for two places. That would have put me in basically the same scenario as the first place we decided not to go with because it would have taken half a year to break even. So it was a must that we found someone to take our place by the end of July.
I put up a Craigslist ad, and I had exactly one person apply for my apartment. We didn't get her approved until this past Wednesday, July 26th. Get this: due to the fact that my wife are moving on Sunday, July 30th, because that is the only day we could get lots of help and not have to burn a vacation day to move, this new tenant it taking over our lease for ONE day (July 31st) before signing her own new lease. I'm forfeiting our deposit here to her because she is taking the deposit "as is," but it was only $300, and I'm pretty sure we would have had to pay most of that to cleaning fees anyway. I asked the new tenant to pay me one days' worth of rent because she was moving in for one day before her new lease was up, and she did.
All in all, the moving costs are about $400 (app fees, moving costs, paying one day rent at two places, admin fees, etc.), maybe a shade under, but our new place is saving us $440 a month between rent and utilities. Granted my commute is now a little longer, we should be able to recoup that money within about 30 days or so (not including the refundable security deposit, none of which will go towards cleaning fees).
I'm also working towards my own promotion hopefully before the end of the year or early next year. That should be a $10-15k raise. With these new events, my wife and I could be out of credit card debt by the Summer or Fall of next year, and a raise could push that into late Spring or early Summer of next year. We would still have my school loans as well as two car loans, but at least those wouldn't be killing our credit score and at high interest rates to boot.
TL;DR: My wife got a raise, I finally was able to refinance my car loan for lower interest and lower payments, and we are moving, all of which increased our cash flow by $847.58 a month, which should get us out of credit card debt by next summer or fall.