Debt Update

Our last debt update wasn’t too bad. We paid off 3.1% of our debt total. Sadly, I don’t think we did as well this month. With Christmas coming, debt reduction has been difficult. However, I’m still considering it a win as long as we don’t increase our debt!

Okay, on to our debt update!

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back $1150 to each of them, which means we are well over two-thirds of the way through paying them back! Although once we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I will be so happy when I can no longer consider them a debt! Our car loan has continued to decrease as well. We have a 0% loan so it’s nice to see the payment actually affect the bottom line; to that end, I don’t really focus on paying extra towards our car payment because it’s at 0% interest. I know that goes against what Dave Ramsey teaches, but I can’t see paying more interest on my credit card balance just to get an interest free loan paid off quicker.

I was doing really well using a cash-only diet for a couple months. I fell off-the-wagon so to speak. My credit card found its way back into my wallet and I have used if for small, frivolous purchases. I need to take it out of my wallet again and focus on using only the cash I have on hand.  I still need to do this, but with Christmas looming it’s been hard. I think I will focus on taking the credit card out of my wallet after Christmas, which I know sounds like a cop out, but as long as my debt is still decreasing I have to consider it a win. As long as our debt continues to go down and I am still paying off more than I am adding we are going in the right direction. I am happy to say that for the third month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say again that our debt went up!)

Here are our current debt totals:

            $19,814.17        Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $350                 The Girl

            $350                 The Boy

            $5475.00           Car Loan at 0% interest

          

Our total debt stands at: $25,989.17. YIKES! I can hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATED seeing a 2 as the first number on our credit card and I’m so happy that our credit card debt is back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt only has a 1 in the front! In the grand scheme of things, the actual amount of debt is not that much less but psychologically there is a huge difference! I’m hoping for a much bigger decrease next month!

Plus side: our debt decreased! We paid off over $750 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to about 2.8% of our total debt. We continue to make progress on both our car loan and the loan to The Kids, and the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids. An unexpected bonus is that our total debt fell into the 25K-something range… barely, but it did. I didn’t expect that to happen until next month and I’m so happy it happened this month! Any little win is a win!

Down side: we didn’t pay off a total of $1000 which is what I’m still hoping for, and of course that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $18000 and hitting my goal of under $18000 by 12/31/18 (which with our new debt plan should not be a problem). Making continued progress on our car loan and decreasing our overall debt from 25K-something to (possibly…. Maybe… hopefully) 23K-something.

Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been thrown out the window. There are only 2 months of the year left and I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, I can’t change the past, all I can do is improve my future. Since our credit card debt is still so high, my goal for the end of 2018 is to be under $18000 in credit card debt. My other debts will continue to decrease at their slow and steady pace, but I am going to payoff $2000 more in credit card debt by the end of the year.

Clearly, I’m not in an ideal situation. But if I have to get out of debt one baby step at a time, I can do that.

WOW! This was another long post! If you stayed around until the end, thank you! If you got bored and moved on, I totally understand.

Look out goal #1: below $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/18… I’m coming for you!