To say that this summer sort of got away from me would be a gigantic understatement. April and May were full of “unexpected” expenses and unfortunately the budget and debt snowball sort of fell by the wayside. I’m pretty disappointed but we had some things come up that we had to take care of – I guess that is the definition of adulting – but we did not make much debt snowball progress.
The good news is – we were both so ready to get back on track in June and, thanks to cashing in our whole life insurance policies, were able to pay off two of our student loans! YAY!
Here is a reminder of what we are working with:
OUR ORIGINAL DEBTS
- Best Buy Credit Card: $441.23
- Student Loan #1: $859.03
- Spark Business Card: $1,409.59
- Barclay Credit Card: $2,377.31
- Student Loan #2: $2,939.64
- Student Loan #3: $4,464.77
- Student Loan #4: $4501.44
- Capital One Credit Card: $4,911.49
- Student Loan #5: $5,427.62
- Student Loan #6: $9,772.15
- Car Loan: $6,800
Total: $43,912.99
WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Quick update on our remaining debt balances after six months:
OUR CURRENT REMAINING DEBTS
- Student Loan #4: $3966.09
- Capital One Credit Card: $4589.60
- Student Loan #5: $4365.70
- Student Loan #6: $8545.28
- Car Loan: $4,900 (estimated)
Total Remaining: $26,366.67
Total Paid Off: $15,704.41
WHAT’S LEFT
Best Buy Credit Card: $441.23Student Loan #1: $859.03Spark Business Card: $1,409.59Barclay Credit Card: $2,377.31Student Loan #2: $2,939.64Student Loan #3: $4,464.77Student Loan #4: $4501.44- Capital One Credit Card: $4,911.49
- Student Loan #5: $5,427.62
- Student Loan #6: $9,772.15
- Car Loan: $4,900 (estimated)
WHAT HAPPENED IN APRIL/MAY/JUNE
April, as you know, is tax month. YAY! Not. We had a tax bill of $1,093 for federal income tax, $420 for Louisiana state income tax, and $350 to our accountant to tell us we owed all this money. However, for the first time, EVER, we were able to pay our own tax bill. In the past for us, this has always been an emergency and we have not had the budgeting capabilities to make it happen. So even though it put a major pause on our debt paydown, it was still sort of a win for us to be able to pay all of that without dipping in to our emergency fund or asking family to help us out.
In addition to our tax bills, April and May brought a lot of car repairs our way. We figure since we are going to keep our cars for as long as possible, we should take really good care of them! We put two new tires on our car and had to have the ball bearing and hub in the car replaced – both of those to the tune of about $600. The day after we got the ball bearing fixed, the air compressor in our car went out, so we had to fix that as well, which cost us about $1,100.
We finally got our term life insurance in place (yay!) so we have
cancelled our whole life insurance and received our cash payout of about $6,400 and we used that to put four new tires on our truck and we paid off two student loans in June! That was a huge step forward for us!
We traveled a LOT in June, which you really aren’t supposed to do when you’re working your debt snowball. (Shhhh, don’t tell Dave) but it was all family reunions and things that we planned, worked extra for, and budgeted for! We did really well sticking to a tight budget for all of the traveling and had a great time seeing family a few weekends in a row!
The only bad part was that on our last trip, we were headed to Austin, the transmission started slipping in our car and would not shift gears. CAN WE JUST QUIT WITH THE CAR ISSUES??? So we drove it home, took it to our trusty repair guy, and he tried to figure out what was wrong with it and couldn’t so we had to take it to the dealership. Immediately, just having it at the dealership means an extra $1000 in repairs, right?
We dropped it off, explained the issues to the technician, and even he was sad for us because he knew we would have to have the entire transmission replaced. We were really worried because we knew we didn’t have the cash laying around to pay for that and we did not want to borrow any money either so we both started praying about it. Two days later, the technicial calls to confirm it is indeed the transmission BUT…
We had an extended factory warranty on the transmission. WHAT? HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN? The entire transmission was repaired/replaced for ABSOLUTELY FREE. I have never been so happy to hear that our transmission went out in my life! We got an itemized copy of the bill and it would have been at least $3,200 to pay for it. But by the grace of God, it was covered by this extended warranty we didn’t even know we had. Hallelujah!
Many times, people call in and ask Dave on his show – what do we have if we have an emergency that is more than $1000? And his answer is always – you don’t. I don’t know what we would have done without this heaven-sent warranty but I do know that we would have just had to figure out a way to make this a non-emergency and take care of it!
So there you have an update of our budget as of today – I’ll get back with you guys next week and let you know what happened in July too!
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