Interview with Mrs. Accountability

• What encouraged you to start Out of Debt Again?

I’d had a personal blog for a couple of years, and I’d been reading personal finance blogs since we had accrued some credit card debt. The very first blogs I remember reading were Millionaire Mommy, Frugal Babe and Paid Twice. I didn’t think our debt was enough to have a PF blog since other PF bloggers had huge college loans, or huge mortgages, were already out of debt, or were millionaires. They also seemed to have plenty of money coming in every month and were able to snowball hundreds a month towards their debt. They were very successful at their endeavors to get out of debt, and seemed to be doing everything right. The husbands and wives seemed to be on board, and I just didn’t think I had a chance to compete with such success. But then I ran across Mr. Debtbeater’s blog.

Unfortunately he’s not posted in over a year, but when I read how he was going in the hole by $500 a month and his family wasn’t cooperating with his efforts, I was actually inspired to start Out of Debt Again.

I also felt quite defeated at the prospect of being in debt again. I also felt quite defeated at the prospect of being in debt again. I’d lived at poverty level for three years, without a vehicle and in a small mobile home so I could get out of debt the first time. Then I got a job, we moved to the country and then we went through a series of events that caused us to go into debt. I was feeling desperate when I started Out of Debt Again. I was feeling pretty burned out with our finances and I hoped having a blog would help me to be more accountable. That’s how I came up with the pen name, Mrs. Accountability.

• Do life experiences play a key part in the content of your blogs?

Yes, definitely. I prefer to read blogs with a personal touch to them, rather than simply how to get out of debt posts, or ten rules to buying gold, twenty ways to lower your credit card debt, etc. I find those articles helpful, but I like a bit of personality in what I read. I look at daily life and anything related to personal finance often shows up as a blog post. It took me a while to train myself to look for financially related events to share, but it has gotten easier.

• What financial topic is your favorite to blog about?

Favorite topic. That’s hard to pinpoint one. From my tag cloud, it looks like my most popular category is saving money. So let’s go with saving money. Although by saving money, I don’t mean saving money in a savings account, but saving money on items we purchase. For example, we try to only buy groceries that are on sale to save money.

• Does having your husband, Mr. A involved in blogging with you make blogging easier or more fun?

Well, up until the recent cash system for groceries he hasn’t really paid too much attention to our finances. And then he started watching Dave Ramsey and realized it wasn’t fair for him to leave all the financial decisions to me. It’s been kind of hard to stay accountable when one person isn’t engaged with the plan. Now that he’s participating, we’ve talked about him maybe doing a guest post, but we haven’t come up with a topic yet. He keeps up on all the news concerning our country’s economy, so I’ve been thinking maybe he could share some of his thoughts in that regard. It’s a lot more fun now that he’s on board!

• Does experiencing credit card debt first hand change your perspective about it and how you relate to your readers?

Yes. I feel guilty about having credit card debt, but at the same time grateful that we had the credit for the times we needed it. I feel sorry for others who are in the same position of needing to use credit cards to survive a crisis situation.

• What is some advice on debt you could share with our readers?

Since most of my readers are personal finance bloggers, I’ll probably be speaking to the choir. I would say live within your means. Don’t buy a big brand new house when a smaller older one would work just as well. Don’t buy a brand new car unless you’re absolutely rolling in dough and have nowhere else to put your money. Don’t use credit cards unless you pay them off every month. Train yourself to keep every receipt and track your spending using an accounting program like Quicken, it really helps when you want to know where all your money went in the last month or year.

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