March Debt Update

It was a decent month for debt payoff. Unfortunately, our credit card bill rose over the course of the month, but our overall debt decreased. That should be the last time we see a rise in our credit card as now it is the debt we our focusing all our energy on. I know we should stop charging on it altogether, but we haven’t. We are doing a better job of allocating some money into all of our budget categories, at the expense of paying down debt, so we shouldn’t have to charge so much in the future.

We were able to clear our first two debts, so that is something.

We did drop a “decade” in our debt. We went from owing over $30000 to dropping into the $20000s, it’s not much, but it’s something, and it’s a start. Obviously, it will be awhile before we do that again, so I’m going to bask in the success while I can.

As of my last update in February, we owed of $30529.97. 

Here are our debts:

            $13274.99        Credit Card at 14.99% - current minimum payment is $286

            $1400               The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1400               The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $12400.25        Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $28475.24.

We paid off $2054.73, or 6.7% of our debt total; that’s even including what we added to our credit card and stupid tax, aka, interest.

We wiped out our first two debts from the last update post, increased the amount of credit card debt we had, but made a little progress on the remaining three debts. Overall, our debt decreased. That is a trend we plan to continue.

I’m super happy we were able to pay back my friend and our plumbing bill from the kitchen remodel. By wiping those out, we have two fewer debts to pay and worry about. Also, every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, we put $50 into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly.

We should see a decrease on our credit card debt by our next debt update. By the time of our next update, I’m hoping to throw nearly $3000 at debt, and more if we have any surplus leftover in our grocery envelopes. Currently, any gas envelope surplus is going to our car repair envelope.  The remaining envelopes; school, kids’ activities, clothes, essentials, and haircare carry over each month. I haven’t decided until how much, but at least a couple of hundred dollars, (HA! Like that will ever happen!).

When planning our April budget, I did try to fund our different budget categories, which has been the problem in the past. I didn’t fund those categories, but the kids still need clothes, hair needs to be cut, and toilet paper needs to be bought. Although by funding these we pay off debt more slowly, it also keeps us from accruing more debt because we have, at least some of, the money we need to buy essentials. Between the months of March and April, we allocated over $1200 to different budget categories, not including food or gas. In all honesty, it’s probably not enough, but at least it’s a start. As we pay off more and more debt, we will be able to fully fund all our envelopes.

I do feel like 6% is a great number, and much better than the increase we had from November to February. If we were able to have 6% gains every month, that would be awesome. But, being realistic here, some months are better than other. The goal right now, is to not increase our debt totals and to keep them going down. My goal is to lower our debt total every month, whether by baby steps or leaps and bounds.