Making Progress

I am making progress.

I haven’t transferred money from my savings account to my checking account since May. For many months, I was taking money out of savings EVERY single month. I’m very happy that we haven’t taken from our savings in 5 months; and not only that, but we’ve actually added to our balance over the last several months.

Even with all the debt we have, I like to have a $10000 emergency fund. We are not quite there, but we are within a few hundred dollars (this should be topped off when we receive our credit from our Japan trip). For several months our savings account was steadily decreasing. I’m happy to see we didn’t take any money from our savings account. I know many people think $10000 is excessive when we are still in debt, but we have so many liabilities that I want to make sure we are covered in the case of a true emergency. We own a house. Roofs spring leaks, pipes burst, washers and dryers break. $10000 ensures that we could cover all of these things, even if they happened at the same time. We also have kids. Our kids are active in sports and $10000 ensures that we would be able to get them any medical care necessary in the event of an accident. We have cars. As everyone knows, cars are expensive. We have to be able to get to work and to get kids to school; $10000 makes sure that if something were to happen to one of our cars, we could still get where we need to be.

More than just adding to our own savings, we also haven’t borrowed any more money from our kids since before we moved over a year and a half ago. Granted, we haven’t even finished paying them back, but we still haven’t used any more of their money. Of the nearly $1500 we borrowed from each kid, we have paid back $1050. We still owe each kid $450, but we are getting there. In fact, after we get our credit card balance below $18000 (with the goal of this being done by 12/31/18) our next goal will be to pay the kids back. I decided I don’t want this bill hanging around our necks for the next 9 months ($450 remaining/$50 per month).

I am making progress. It’s not monumental. It’s not earth-shattering, but it is progress in the right direction. Slow and steady wins the race. I often need to remind myself of this. We didn’t get into debt overnight so we certainly aren’t going to get out of debt overnight.

Our credit card debt is going down. Our savings balance is going up. Our envelopes are being filled. Progress!!!