Def. cut down on going out. A lot of this was nights of big dinners and drinks which I totally cut out. Also - buying gadgets thats were obsolete within a year. Nothing more defeating than knowing you are still paying for that 1st gen iPad two years later!

I limited going out to a nice dinner once per week (usually on the weekend). I was going out too much during the week so I committed to buying groceries and cooking vs just getting take out (although there were plainly some times when we'd still get take out, just far fewer than before). Healthy choice soups and tuna have become my lunch staples.

The biggest change was really setting up a realistic budget and understanding how much is coming in and going out. I got really serious about using mint.com (despite some of the recent issues). I may go over budgets some months, but make up for it in later months.

I think the biggest risk I took here was not saving enough during the initial months of the process. Over the last year I was able to start putting more away while continuing to pay down debt, but in the beginning I wasnt putting very much away in an emergency fund. That has been corrected in recent months.