Lots of people keep telling me to "sell the house and get a cheaper one"... well it's not that easy. My house is worth less than what I paid for it. $60,000 less. Meaning if I sell the house, I would still owe the banks money - basically have to repay the difference. The money I put into the house is already gone.

I did consider walking away from the house and taking the Obama tax safe haven, where you can get off the hook from having the pay taxes on a short sale. I came very close to doing that in 2010. But being 40, I didn't want to take a hit to my credit - which is trashed during that process.

SO I opted to keep the house and refinance into a slightly better interest rate (from 6% to 4.5%). And took a roommate instead. This has helped a bit, yes.

But the point being of this thread is to show that, although I have worked hard to increase my delta (spendable cash), things are changing in the economy and the cost of living is slowly going up.

Most of my "spendable cash" goes towards paying off credit card debt right now (or other things like house repairs, or car repairs, etc etc...)