I must admit, I don’t pitch nearly as much as I should, as I’ve let myself become so distracted by my blogging, but here is proof that I do, in fact, write other things.

Tango magazine has run my story about the desperate measures I took to get myself out of debt, with my marriage as the catalyst that finally forced me to get my finances under control.

Aaaand, on a completely different note, they’ve run my story on what not to do at a sex party.

God, I never would’ve known these had gone up if someone hadn’t e-mailed me with congratulations.

My husband battled his fears of eventual bankruptcy by supporting my decision to leave my staff job and pursue freelancing full-time. And when I succeeded in bringing in my former staffer income within half a year as a freelancer, I sort of wanted to wiggle my butt and point and scream “In! Your! Face!”

The only thing that kept me from doing so was the knowledge that I still had a lot of debt to manage…debt that I probably should have taken care of before leaving my job.

There have been some awesome finance-centric posts floating around the blogosphere lately. April Borbon wrote about the 10 Items You Absolutely Need For Financial Security over at Freelance Switch, and I immediately began implementing some of her tips (better late than never!), such as throwing 30% of each paycheck into an interest-bearing savings account for quarterly tax purposes, and working harder on becoming debt free. Jeffrey Way helps out over at Freelance Folder with a simple budget how-to.

I’ve since transferred all of my credit card balances to two 0% interest rate credit cards, and have been throwing chunks of money at them monthly. I’ve also signed up for Mint as a means to track my finances. Most drastic of all, I’ve locked my credit cards away and now pay for everything with cash.

While this means that I’ve placed an embargo on pretty-dress-shopping (sad), it also means that I will most likely be debt-free (student loans aside) in one year’s time.

Any money-saving, debt-smashing tips to share with the masses?