I posted a couple articles yesterday

The one about more Americans saving money is great. I hope they are. I know R and I are really working on keeping our debt in check. We are not able to actually physically SAVE more money but we are spending less and paying down debt, which according to the article, is like saving. IDK but I do know that we are being very vigilant in watching what do buy, making do with what we have vs. buying because we want it. There have been a couple exceptions to that but for the most part we are taking great care to time our spending so we do not have to use our credit cards for anything. When we each had better jobs, we were lazy with our money. We had so much more of it that we spent more but we also spend foolishly, using our credit cards whenever. At one point I had almost $4000 on my card and R had $2000. OUCH! I know many Americans have/had much more than that but still that was a lot for us. We worked and budgeted to get that paid off. Currently, I have $40 on my credit card and R has about $200. That is new balance stuff...not left over from the previous high balances. I use my card once a month to make sure the account stays open as I have had problems in the past with a different card company. R has one thing that is a monthly charge that goes to his card and it is less than $10 but we pay that monthly. His current balance comes from a little splurge, he made less than 1 month ago. We filed our taxes yesterday and that will get paid off as soon as we get our refund. Mine will be paid off as soon as I get paid from work. Then we will be credit card debt free once again.