My wife and I just paid off $75k in 14 months following the Dave Ramsey plan. People like to shit on DR (I get it, he can be abrasive) but his recommendations a

My wife and I just paid off $75k in 14 months following the Dave Ramsey plan. People like to shit on DR (I get it, he can be abrasive) but his recommendations and mindset were really helpful. My advice would be to forget about consolidation. DR always talks about how it makes you feel like you did something but you didn't solve the root of your problem (inflow vs outflow). And he was 100% right in our case: we consolidated 25k of our debt at one point and then our balances kept going up, especially since we didn't fix our spending after taking on the $900/mo consolidation payment. I'd say you need to get radical and do whatever it takes to get the debt out of your life: - Start with a budget allocating every dollar of your income to a category (we love YNAB for this). - Cut all the non-essential categories as much as possible, maximize the debt payment category (we still ate out and took small vacations, but all budgeted and paid for in advance). - Take on extra work if you can. - Follow the debt snowball (not mathematically optimal, but man do those early wins feel good). I used a tool called Debt Payoff Planner (stebt.com) to track & manage this. - Start identifying yourself as that crazy person going nuts to pay down your debt. - Immerse yourself in the debt paydown mindset by reading books like The Total Money Makeover or listening to DR's radio shows (at the very least watch some debt free screams). This advice is probably a bit too prescriptive but it really worked for us. It was 14 months of saying no to a lot of things and struggling to stay on course, but it was worth it. Good luck on your journey! It is 100% achievable.