When last we (I) left this blog, my Dad had passed away. I’d like to say that is the reason my blog posting fell off, and that was certainly part of it, but it wasn’t the only reason.

While I was still reeling from the death of my Father and figuring out what that all meant, we got hit by a global pandemic. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It was in a couple of newspapers.

With this hit came a lot of changes in life. As with so many other people around the globe, life changed for me almost overnight in terms of schedules, kids in remote school, activities canceled, and a decent amount of initial fear and stress.

The best way to deal with all of this, at least for me, was to crawl into the fetal position, drink a lot of alcohol, eat horrific food, and in general listen to my skin quietly moaning like a slowly inflating balloon as it expanded and strained to meet these new life choices.

My family and I hunkered down and remained mostly quarantined for the better part of the next year.

Smash cut to 12ish months later, and a lot of stuff has changed. Even though I had already cut my drinking down to a few sips of wine on the weekend, I decided to go whole-hog and take March totally off from drinking. I call it my “March to Sobriety.” Nobody steal that idea. That’s all mine.

In the meantime, while waiting for a vaccine to arrive, I have also built out a modest home gym and have been lifting weights and running around 4-6 miles each day. My son has joined me in the gym, and this has helped to further motivate me to stick with it.

But you didn’t come to this blog to hear how jacked, swole, pumped and buff I’m getting. You came to read about finances…

AND YOU’RE IN LUCK!

If you peep the sweet graphic in the right column of this blog, you’ll see that gains ain’t just for the gym! I have paid off close to $78,000 in credit card and student loan debt, and overall I have stuck to my Digging Out plan almost to the penny.

However, that image is only a small part of the larger story…

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