Wedding vows proclaim a commitment through richer and poorer. Today’s Twitter Tuesday Profile focuses on @MrsMicah, who went from being virtually debt free, to taking on nearly $100,000 in debt when she got married. A resident in the Washington DC area, @MrsMicah is a library paraprofessional, adding materials to the library’s catalog and supervising student workers. Besides doing blog consulting work to earn extra money, Mrs. Micah blogs at financefreelancelife.com.

OODC: How did you get started blogging and tweeting?
@MrsMicah: I’ve been blogging pretty much since there were blogs, I started around 2000. So when, after I got married, I started to approach a new chapter of my life and a whole lot of financial responsibility it just seemed natural to start a blog. I also began reading other personal finance and getting out of debt blogs, which I think helped me keep from having a breakdown.

I started tweeting around the time it caught on in the pf blogging community, before it was as mainstream as it is now. I’ve found it a great way to get to know people beyond what we share on our blogs. It’s introduced me to people I’ve met in real life as well as people who are now my good friends online.

OODC: How did your husband’s $100,000 in school loans impact your marriage?
@MrsMicah:It’s meant that we’ve needed to learn to work as a financial team. Otherwise I might have drifted into generally managing our finances but we wouldn’t have had to be as aware of them. I’m still the one who does most of the work, but we’ve had to discuss spending, etc, so that we can live off just my income and put his toward loan repayment.

I think I’d resent the whole thing a lot more if Micah weren’t so generally responsible with money. This wasn’t credit card debt & until we were married he lived in a crappy, tiny low-rent apartment (now we live in a nicer lowish-rent apartment) with a roommate and ate peanut butter sandwiches half the time. He knew he didn’t have money and he didn’t live like he did. I don’t think we would have gotten married if he was getting into this debt any other way because we wouldn’t have been compatible.

Sometimes I still feel stressed about our future, the years it’s going to take to pay it down and what we could be doing with the money. But I’d say that most of the time it has very little impact on our marriage other than the habits we’ve developed to keep spending down.

OODC: What’s your best advice for other people facing large amounts of debt?
@MrsMicah:Make a game plan that you can stick with. The plan will depend on how much debt you have, what other obligations you have, how much you earn, etc. Right now I’m just starting out in my career and Micah’s earning a very low salary while he teaches and finishes his doctorate.

So we decided to live on just my income, use his money for debt repayment, and then I took on additional consulting work for more debt repayment/now for saving up for my graduate school. It wouldn’t make sense for him to take a 2nd job right now since he needs to spend his free time finishing up his degree so that he can get a real job and earn a fuller salary.

The most important plan isn’t whether you get the debt paid off in 1 year or 5 or 8 as much as it’s that you can stick with your plan while being open to earning more and putting that toward it too. Don’t be so unreasonable that you burn yourself out. DO be willing to make sacrifices and delay gratification in anticipation of a debt-free future.

OODC: Who are some of your favorite money tweeters?
@MrsMicah:It’s hard to choose, different people are my favorites for different things. I’ll go with: @budgetsaresexy @flexo @brokeinthecity @centsiblelife and @deliverawaydebt.

Thanks to @MrsMicah for being part of this week’s Twitter Tuesday Profile. Want to be considered for an upcoming profile? Just tweet me!