Quarterly Update in Will Fly For Food

We have fallen off the bandwagon a bit on the debt snowball with all the new home expenses that have popped up. I think I’m being a bit harder on myself than Nate is about the whole thing, but we are both ready for our expenses to stabilize so we can re-budget, now with a house instead of an apartment, and dive back into debt reduction. We did sit down and do some math and here is how far we have come.

In Summer of 2012 I got serious about paying off my car. I owed about $8,500 on it. I paid that off by April of 2013, then started tearing into my $4,500 on my credit cards. Nate started tearing into his credit cards after he got his current job, which would have been September 2013. I picked up Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book in December 2013 and we have been using his system TOGETHER since then.

$8,500 and a $260.25/month payment - Sarah’s car - April 2013
$4,500 and a $200.00/month payment - Sarah’s credit cards - September 2013
$4,000 and a $75.00/month payment - Nate’s Cabela’s card - October 2013
$3,500 and a $65.00/month payment - Nate’s Edward Jones card - January 2014
$3,800 and a $81.00/month payment - Nate’s Jackrabbit card - February 2014
$1,500 and a $40.00/month payment - Nate’s Discover card - March 2014
$4,500 and a $125.00/month payment - Sarah’s GL Student Loan - March 2014
$1,500 and a $250.00/month payment - Sarah’s medical bills - April 2014
$1,000 and a $50.00/month payment - Nate’s GL Student Loan - April 2014

That’s a total of nearly $33,000 and a little over $1000.00/month in payments that we have shed on about 2 years of debt reduction, with the last year being the part where we hit it hardest.

After that we took a break and started saving money, roughly $2,000 a month to put towards a downpayment on a house. We cashflowed that when we bought our house in August, and have cash-flowed home repairs/updates so far, including appliances - washer/dryer set (used), and all new dishwasher, range/stove, refridgerator, and water heater since our house did not come with any appliances. We’ve also replaced almost all the light fixtures, all the exterior doors/locks, repainted inside. This last weekend we picked out our entire new upstairs bathroom which we will start installing as soon as we can get our current one tore out, as well as new carpet to get the stuff we have OUT. We still have to do some minor repairs to the rain gutters, some interior doors, and we will be replacing all sockets/plug-in recepticles and light switches and switchplates.

We have cash flowed ALL of that. We are completely OVER using credit to pay for things. If we don’t have the cash, we don’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.

We feel like we have a good lead on things and hope to maintain our momentum heading into fall and winter. We will pick up our debt snowball again in December, if not before then. I have a $3,000 student loan that is itching to get paid off. Then it will just be our MONSTER loans with the worst company in the world, Student Loan Finance Corp.

<3 Sarah