I’m only sharing this information with the readers of this site and/or the folks who find us from Bing or Google because I want to show you that there is hope – even in the face of seemingly insurmountable student loan debt. However, success doesn’t just happen; you need a plan. The Excel spreadsheet that I uploaded on the other page was the primary tool I used to track and amend my plan.

I uploaded the “paid in full” letter just to show the world that there is an end of the rainbow that you can reach if you just plan it out. Set goals and meet them, folks. Make it your plan for 2011 to repay a significant portion of your student loan debt or consumer debt and then use whatever tools are at your disposal (maybe the spreadsheet that I uploaded) to keep a check on your plan and – more importantly – yourself. Enjoy!

Sure, no individual needs to use both of these programs at the same time. However, as I own my own business, I used Quicken for the business and Money for my personal finance needs and it worked great for years. Then, earlier this year Quicken essentially stopped supporting my version of the software and told me that I had to update (i.e. purchase an upgrade) in order to keep using their program. Not happening.

Instead, I looked into Money and realized that I could easily manage my business accounts under a separate listing and thus moved everything over to that program and uninstalled Quicken. It was somewhat sad to see the program go, but it was the best financial decision. So if you’re keeping score – Quicken is now gone from my system.

Oh, and bear in mind that this is all going on during the same time period where I’ve essentially decided that I want to strip my computer of all non-essential software and remove myself from superfluous websites. Frankly, since I started this stripping down process, my computer runs smoother and I have an incredible amount of room to store pictures, music, and documents. It’s great! But I digress…

During the last few years I’ve also created a series of spreadsheets that monitors and tracks my every expense down to the penny. Some people would consider that level of personal financial management to be a bit overboard, but at 28 years old (and saddled with $98,000 in student loan debt), I think it is absolutely critical to know where my money is and what it is doing. Also, my use of a certain spreadsheet to plan for upcoming expenses has allowed me to have $0 in credit card/consumer debt while increasing the total dollar amount of other, “good” expenses like donations and money put into savings accounts and the stock market. Money provided tremendous assistance in getting me to the point where I could create my own financial spreadsheets and have them actually mean something. However, last week I removed Microsoft Money Plus from my system.

As I started this post with – this one should have hurt, but it didn’t…at all. Somewhere along the line, Microsoft stopped supporting their Money series to the level that they support, say, and Office suite. I guess that the increasing sales of Office and other Microsoft products necessitated a shift in focus away from personal finance. Plus, with great free personal finance websites popping up (like Mint.com, which was actually purchased by Quicken), I imagine that the powers that be at Microsoft didn’t think that there was a lot of future profit potential in the Money line.

So, the latest software to get removed from my system is Microsoft Money Plus. I wonder which program will be next…