My not break

As you know I've returned to school this semester, now I have one week left (finals week) and then I get a pleasant break before I return to spring semester for some really tuff classes. So while I have not been posting I have been filling my time with building a playhouse, not going on facebook or blogs, not watching T.V. and homework every night until 11 when Jared arrives home. I'm happy with my "wise" use of my time because I love control and I'm the type of person who can waste a lot of valuable time when I have the remote in my hand or if I feel the need to be current with everyone elses' life thru facebook and blogs. Not that it isn't enjoyable :) it just doesn't help me reach my goals. While I've filled my life with "not fun" I've discovered that there is still not enough hours in the day, it is impossible to do school work when the children are awake, and I can live on less sleep.
Jared and I have our 5 year anniversary coming up and were actually going to do something! The vacation plans have been purchased and the date is set so there is no going back- although at times I've thought I was crazy for spending so much money (it really wasn't that much). Which brings me to the point I felt like blogging about today- getting out of debt. This is more of a written commitment for myself so if money and debt bores you then feel free to quit reading now.
Were not in major debt, our cars are paid off, Jared's student loan is on deferral until he is again done with school and we have never used credit cards. The debt we do have is money owed for car repairs, to my parents for a small amount borrowed for closing costs when we refinanced our home, and two lines of credit. In the end if I were to make a pretty educated guess we probably owe just under 4,000.... (when I type that I think man that is a huge number). Its not all due at once and we plan on getting real people paid off first (its the smaller amount anyway) and then tackling the banks. I've tried approaching the debt in the past with what I would call a band-aid method, pay it off quickly in a giant lump sum with any extra money we seem to scrounge up, but not only is that super hard to do it is super depressing when you can't make those huge goals and life uses the "extra" money you thought you would have. I think my problem is that I keep picturing the future months as completely devoid of money sucking problems, that has yet to occur in my married life so small steps to eliminate our debt is probably a better solution. Things I think are working in my financial planning are adding debt to my budget, every month I have $150 figured in to pay down something. Another thing that seems to help is finding ways to earn extra cash to put toward debt. From the money I've made I've been able to pay for all but $60 of our anniversary so before too long I'll have the complete trip paid for. I think that when schools out I'm gonna find a couple financial books from the library to give me some fresh ideas on how I can help our issues. If you know of any good self help financial books I'm open to suggestions..