As you know, life went topsy-turvy for the whole world during this last three+ months! We are very lucky to still have our jobs and full paychecks, but life has been crazy!
This debt update is based on our April update because I didn't get around to doing a May debt update. I’m just being real and trying to be transparent. I do these mid-month because our credit card closes on the 15th. I can’t wait for the day when we are consumer debt free and I can do our financial savings updates at the beginning of each month and I don’t have to take into account when our debt cycle closes!
Although we are not paying off our debt as fast as I would like, I am happy to say that for the fourth update in a row our overall debt decreased; and in a BIG way! Let's get to the update and then we can look more at the "why"!
Here is our current debt totals:
$13,577.39 Credit Card at 16.74% interest
Our total debt stands at: $13,577.39 YIKES! It’s still a lot of debt. All we can do is just keep plugging away. We dug our hole one shopping trip at a time and all we can do is pay it back one month at a time.
Plus side: we paid off 21% of our debt!!!! We started actively tracking our debt again! Our debt decreased! We paid off $3589.62 of credit card debt; again, that's 21% of our debt total!!!! Although we still owe a lot of money, our debt is the lowest it's been since January, 2018! That's something to celebrate! The fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids is still a plus to me. We continue to make progress towards our retirement and to contribute $50 a month to our kids’ bank accounts. We are down to “just” one debt. I know it’s a biggie, but it’s exciting to be down to only one debt!
Down side: No matter how much debt we pay off, it’s never enough. We also had a few months of backsliding and not keeping track of where we were that we are still trying to recover from. L Also, we did still charge on our credit card. Of course, I also hate that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal! It’s actually a little depressing to see how long we have been on this roller coaster called debt freedom. We made some poor choices and have been living in a debt cycle for too long!
How we did it: I want to give full disclosure. This was just not an awesome month. This was not just because it was an "extra" paycheck month (because it was). The majority of what we paid off came from a credit for our vacation airline flights. We booked and paid for our family vacation flight back in February and then Covid-19 hit with a vengeance in March. This past week we were able to cancel our trip for a full refund!!! Hence the huge debt payoff this month! Heck, if we could do that much every month, I would only have 4 months left in debt! If only!
Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $13,000 (☹) and keeping it that way. And to actually having a chance to meet our goal of getting our credit card debt under $10000 by the end of the year! (I wasn't sure it was something we would be able to do, but this month really gave us a boost!) I’m also looking forward to staying on the debt pay-off and blogging band wagon! I was off of it for too long and it feels good to be making progress again! Even though we have been home, quarantining has been expensive! We have spent SO. MUCH. MONEY on food! I have also bought a lot on Amazon. It’s been dangerous! I have several hundred dollars in a jar that goes towards our credit card balance, but because of Covid-19 the whole going-to-the-bank thing isn't very convenient. But, one of my goals for the next month is to get to the bank and send the money towards our credit card.
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.
I hope your debt freedom journey is smooth, uneventful, and beyond successful!
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