Our Progress: Month 1
Photo by wili hybrid
Dear Reader,
As promised, here is the summary of our progress during the first month of our mission. We began January of 2008 with $24,582 in debt ($16,012 on a credit card and $8570 on a car loan). I set out goal to finish paying off debt by December 31st 2010. Estimating the interest, our payment should be $1124 towards debt each month. Here are the changes we made to begin accomplishing this:
- We increased our giving. This may seem paradoxical, but if you study the Bible you will find that paradoxical reigns. We will increase our giving each month making it just a little more uncomfortable.
- We canceled one cell phone. We won’t feel the affect of that until next month. We will cancel the other one in July since our payments through then will be just under the cancellation fee.
- We decreased our grocery budget to $100/week. We will continue to decrease that slightly each month. It is not our dream/goal to do have to live on so little, but it is very much part of our goal of becoming debt free.
We had a few unexpected things happen:
- We received a bill from the hospital for $629 for a visit to the emergency room in March of ‘07. We had to decrease our savings by $325, but instead of taking it out of our emergency fund, it came from our vacation savings which should have more than enough by summer.
- We were blessed with gift cards for Christmas which have helped with our grocery, gas, and clothing budget.
During January we paid:
- Our minimum payment of $250 for the car
- $400 towards our credit card.
The payment towards debt was $474 short of the goal. The readjusted monthly payment will be $1144. That seems a bit intimidating, but I broke it down to see how much that would be per day. The total? About $1.63 a day. Not unreasonable at all.
We’d love to hear from you. How are you doing on your goal? Any ideas to help the progress? Could you find $1.63 a day to pay off your debt?
Have you ever had that nagging feeling that there was something more to do with your life? I don’t remember exactly when it started for me...
Hi,
Good for you for starting the journey. I paid of about $60,000 (£ equivalent) in 3 years. Most of it happened near the end of that time. You get better as you go, so you will pay more off in the later months, so don’t worry at all that you’ve fallen short this month. Be gentle on yourselves and remember to celebrate success. Most importantly, get your help and advice from people who’ve done it already – and not a bank!
Good fortune on your journey.
@ Heather – Thanks for the great reminder. We’ll try not to beat ourselves up about missing the mark. And yes, we’ll definitely seek the advice of those who have done the work, not those who want to make money from us. I appreciate it! And I’ve subscribed to your blog.