Make Up Your Mind, Already!

I have issues.

As I was sitting here, writing a different blog post, it occurred to me that with the payment I was going to make to my credit card tomorrow, and the payment I was going to make on Friday, I had more than enough money to pay off our now smaller credit card, or what I usually call credit card 1. So instead of making small payments on that card, I am choosing to pay it off. By doing this, I might not, actually probably won’t, make my March 30 goal of paying of the other credit card, but overall, I think it puts me in a better place financially. I won’t have two debts to be worried about and I will be following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps of paying off small debts first (sort of).

Once that credit card is paid off, which it should be by Friday, I will back track a little and work towards saving up a baby emergency fund of $1000. As of right now, we have very little money in the bank. We do have about $1200 in another bank, but all that money is earmarked for something. If needs be, we could use it, but that makes other bills a struggle to have to pay.

By paying off the credit card before creating the emergency fund, I’m kind of putting the cart before the horse, but I think the psychological boost will be worth it. And, if I did my math right, the $1000 emergency fund won’t be too far behind.

The “I have issues”, is because I am all over the place. The only thing I’m consistent about, is that I want to be debt free… I just can’t decide how to go about that goal.

As I’m writing this, I’m working it out in my head. We are going back to the basics, in a backwards order. We are going to pay our “smallest” debt first.  We will pay off what we usually call CC1, then we will rebuild a baby emergency fund of $1000 and continue contributing $50 per paycheck into savings, and lastly we will attack “the credit card we pay off monthly” with vigor.

I still have a super stretch goal of paying off our credit card debt by March 30, but I am aware that is a super stretch! I will be able to contribute any tax refund we receive to our debt and the “lump sum” amount that I receive for our raise. We would also need to drastically cut back on our spending for a couple months. It’s doable, but it’s work!

I was reading a blog post today and it mentioned that in our journey’s everyone stumbles some time. December was a stumble for me; but now, I’m getting back to work and back on track.