Monday, June 30, 2008

End of the Month Tally

As promised a few posts ago, I'm going to keep track of my debt pay-down activity to keep me motivated and to get some of y'all motivated. I think I'm doing fairly well considering that I haven't been on a binge shopping spree. I am, however, using my credit cards way too much - they're supposed to be for bills and gas only. Or maybe gas is that expensive that I'm not noticing???

Either way, I'll be giving regular end of the month updates and posting any new and interesting money management articles/tips/tricks I come across.

I'm using Dave Ramsey's snowball method coupled with the lazy snowflaking method I learned from Florida Chic over at Debt Smack and I think I'm off to a fairly good start:

Starting Balance
CC1 - $0
CC2 - $0
CC3 - $0
Student Loan 1 - $3500
Student Loan 2 - $12204.79
Student Loan 3 - $27000

Current Balance
CC1 - $12.99
CC2 - $79.06
CC3 - $124.05
Student Loan 1 - $3106.91
Student Loan 2 - $12122.69
Student Loan 3 - $27000 (still in deferment)

Since I'm in the habit of paying the cards off every month, my snowballing goes toward my student loans. I'm expecting the first one to be paid off by May '09 or earlier with the added snowflakes. The expected payoff date for the second one is April 2021, but that's going to change very soon. It seems very daunting now to be paying all of this money back, but I keep reading that little by little, it will become more and more manageable.

Looking at all those numbers makes me happy that I don't have a car payment. YAY for 13 year old cars that are still running!

On to new business. I'm hoping to more serious with my writing, so I'll be posting more regularly. I don't know if I'm going to go the schedule route, but hopefully I can give you something twice a week. I'll try and redecorate too. =)

Word.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey I'm glad you got a plan on paying down the debts. I think they should make a part two to college saying how to handle your debt. They should make that a mandatory class, because when that money kicks in then you are trying to reshuffle the deck. Just wanted to drop in and say what's up, looking forward to more blogs.

Freeman P.
http://freemanpress.wordpress.com

All-Mi-T [Thought Crime] Rawdawgbuffalo said...

i think u doing great folk
and 13 year old cars are paid for

Eb the Celeb said...

Student loans are the worst... when I first starting paying them back I was like for real... I really gotta pay ya'll back huh... just when I was starting to get in the saving money groove they come and snatch my little extra I had.

Cookbook Queen said...

Great job! Keep up the good work!