It seems that having less money makes people want to pay off their debts.

U.S. households paid down their debts in the third quarter for the first time since at least 1952, the Federal Reserve reported today, according to MarketWatch. Finally, some good news from the recession.

Hit by a loss of $2.81 trillion in their net wealth, U.S. households' total outstanding debt shrank at an annual rate of 0.8%, from $13.94 trillion to $13.91 trillion as of Sept. 30, the Fed reported.

If you have a lot of time on your hands and enjoy hobbies such as watching paint dry, then you may want to read the Federal Reserve's "Flow of Funds Accounts" report released today for all the juicy details. It's the first decline in household debt ever recorded in the report.

Mortgage debt fell for the first time ever too, at a 2.4% annual rate to $10.54 trillion. Other consumer debts, such as credit cards and auto loans, increased at a 1.2% annual rate in the quarter to $2.6 trillion.

The federal government, however, didn't do its part by lessening its debt. Total U.S. domestic nonfinancial debt increased at a 7.2% annual rate, boosted by a postwar record 39.2% increase in debt taken on by the federal government.

Aaron Crowe is an unemployed journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read about his job search at www.talesofanunemployeddad.blogspot.com

Welcome to WalletPop's series "You've graduated. Now what?" Our bloggers have a wealth of suggestions to help you find you way through that time of amazing transformation, from student to working stiff.

I still had my diploma in one hand when my father handed me a bill totaling up all that I owed the family for my four years of higher education. He's the sarcastic type, so I thought he was joking, but he was actually serious. I was taking on some of the debt burden, but my parents had taken out loans as well and he figured they were my responsibility. My mom had to talk him down and let him give me a little time to get on my feet -- interest free -- before I started making payments.

They also ended up co-signing my first rental lease and fronting the broker's fee and first month's rent when I moved to New York for an internship that paid $5 an hour (just to give a sign of the declining times: A few years later, that internship paid nothing at all, and the company went out of business last year). So it wasn't just Sallie Mae that I owed.

So here's the deal. We're broke. Not poor, just broke. We live paycheck to paycheck and it's just rough. We can't live like this forever. It's not safe and just doesn't make sense. So we have to develop a plan. A plan for today, a plan for tomorrow.

What can we do to get out of this financial mess? I think it's obvious to state that I'm not a financial planner or expert by any means. What I'm planning is based off what I have read and been told and plain ol' common sense.

We can't save money if we don't have money to spend. So the first thing I have done is lowered our monthly bills as much as possible. I've only made a few changes but already I have saved us about $120 a month on our TV and cell phone bills. We are all working on using less electricity and gas to hopefully bring those bills down as well.

Are you thinking about buying a home, but you need to improve your credit score in order to get the best interest rate? Paying down debt using the round robin strategy can get you there the fastest. People with the best credit score only use 10% to 20% of their available credit, so the faster you can pay down your debt on each card, the better your credit score will be. (If you're looking to minimize your interest and a quick improvement in credit score doesn't matter, then use the snowball effect strategy instead.)

With this strategy you first focus on paying down all your credit cards to a debt level of about 30% of your available credit. For example, if you have a credit line of $3,000, to be at 30% utilization the maximum balance you should have on that card is $900. When you get all your cards paid down to 30% utilization, then start working on getting them down to 20%. Once they are all at 20% utilization then start paying them down to 10%. Your final round robin stage will be to pay off the cards completely. When you reach the 10% goal your credit score should be up by at least 30 points and could be up by as much as 70 points. If you've had a history of late payments and are now paying your credit cards on time, your credit score could improve by as much as 40 points.

Will that make a big difference when applying for a mortgage? People with a credit score of 730 or higher get the best interest rate offers. As long as your credit score is above 730 there's no reason to worry. Even if you push that score higher you won't likely get a better offer. But if your credit score is below 675 you will pay almost 2% more interest on a mortgage loan, which will mean thousands of dollars more in interest over the life of that loan. If your credit score is below 620, expect to pay 3% to 4% more interest on that mortgage loan. So taking the time to get your score up using the round robin strategy could make a huge difference in the loan packages you'll be offered.