Our last debt update wasn’t too bad. We paid
off 2.7% of our debt total. I’m hoping to do even better this month!
Going forward, however, things are going to look a little
different because we are redoing debt. By different, I’m hoping
that our debt is going to start dropping faster! We are hoping to be out of
debt in 13 months, so, by November 2019. The new plan hasn’t really kicked into
overdrive yet as The Husband’s 401k contribution hasn’t affected his paycheck
yet and my change will not go into effect until my October 31st
paycheck. But change, it is a coming!
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
$1100 to each of them, which means we are 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. But I am happy to say that for the
second 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:
$20,124.54 Credit Card at 16.24% interest
$400 The Girl
$400 The Boy
$5820.00 Car Loan at 0% interest
Our total debt stands at: $26,744.54. YIKES! (This
stinks… many of these charges will be paid off, but they were added at the very
end of our billing cycle before I could process the payment through my bank.
And a couple hundred dollars of our new balance are charges I made for my mom,
who will pay me back; but again, after the billing cycle closes. Oh well, I
will just hope that the progress really shows in our next debt update!) I can
hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATE seeing a 2 as the
first number on our credit card and I can’t wait until my next update when I’m
sure it will be back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt will only
have 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 dropped from 27K-something to 26K-something.
We paid off almost $900 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to almost 3.1%
of our total debt, which is more than last month. 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 and haven’t transferred money over from
our savings account in over 5 months!
Down side: we didn’t pay off a total of $1000 which was
what I was 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 $20,000
and working towards 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 26K-something to 25K-something.
Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been
thrown out the window. There are only 3 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 over $20000, 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
$3000 in credit card debt by the end of the year.
We didn’t pay off as much debt as I would have liked in
total dollars, but that’s always the case. Due to some unexpected expenses, we
did not pay off as much debt as I wanted, but we did still manage to decrease
our debt by nearly $900 so I’ll count that as a win.
Obviously, 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.
Also over the next month I will get back on the no-credit
card-bandwagon and stick to our budget! This all combined with my only real
financial goal right now, getting our credit card debt below $18000 by New
Year’s Eve!
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!
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