Debt Update March

Our last debt update was pretty darn good, and I don’t see how we are possibly going to beat that month any time soon! We made great progress and paid off almost $1500 in actual dollars and a whopping 6.1% of our total debt! Plus, this was the update where we finally fell under $18,000 of credit card debt! It was a great month and I only hope that we can keep the progress going! The Husband had a lot of overtime during the month that contributed to our progress and he had more overtime in the first period of this debt cycle so we’ll have to see where we fall!

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back all of it, which means we are done! I’m so happy that we don’t owe them any more money! Although now that we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I’m so happy that 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.

Although we are not paying off our debt as fast as I would like, I am happy to say that for the seventh month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say that our debt went up!) Usually we are not making giant leaps and bounds in our debt repayment, but believe that slow and steady wins the race, but last month was awesome and this month we are hoping to see some real progress!  

Here are our current debt totals:

            $16,686.85      Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $0                    The Girl

            $0                    The Boy

            $4085.00         Car Loan at 0% interest    

      

Our total debt stands at: $20,771.85 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 hate seeing a 2 as the first number of our total consumer debt! 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 and I can’t wait until I can say the same thing for my total debt!!! We are inching closer and closer to falling under the $20,000 mark! I can’t wait!

This is our best month of debt payoff, ever! I know most months won’t be like this, but I’ll take them when I can get them!!!! After this month, our debts decreased from 4 debts to pay down to 2. We got rid of 2 debts this month!  I just need to remember that slow and steady wins the race. We are getting there. We are making progress and we will get out of debt. Next month won’t be as good, but we will decrease our debt.

Plus side: our debt decreased! We paid off almost $2000 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to about 8.8% of our total debt. It was another good month! Mostly unexpectedly (and excitedly) skipping the $21Ks altogether and falling into the 20K-something range! I never even saw that happening! I saw how close we were and I decided to pay off our debt to The Kids! This has been our best month so far for debt payoff since we started to seriously prioritize getting out of debt! We continue to make progress on our car loan. I’m so excited we finished paying off our loan from The Kids! And the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids is a plus. All the hours of overtime really contributed to debt payoff and the fact that we could send all his overtime to debt. Overall, a great month!

Down side: No matter how much debt we pay off, it’s never enough. L Also, we did still charge on our credit card; not a lot, but enough. Of course I also hate that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal. Because I didn’t realize how close we were, we couldn’t pay off $2000 total. Even paying our kids back in full, we were $5 short of paying off $2000. But, again, I’ll take it. I think it’s a win to even get close to $2000.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $16,000 Making continued progress on our car loan and actually dropping another thousand on our loan (through no effort of our own, just normal payments). Definitely looking forward to decreasing our overall debt from 20K-something to 19K-something and finally getting our total debt under $20000. We should be able to do that next month! I’m really hoping!!!! I’m also looking forward to fully funding our envelopes and continuing our use of a cash only mainly budget! I see a tiny glimmer of hope of reaching a total “debt worth” of less than $20,000. I know I’m still a little bit away, but I can see us creeping up on it. I’m hoping my debt update next month can shout the news of having less than $20000 in debt!

I posted my 2019 financial goals. They are all doable if I work at them. And if I am successful with each one, I will definitely improve my financial situation by the end of the year. Getting out of debt is such a gigantic goal of mine! Debt affects almost all of my decisions: food, vacation, transportation… it’s crazy how much our past mistakes are affecting our future choices.

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