The best way to know where you’re headed over a course of time is to keep up with where you’ve been, no? When we started our debt snowball we wrote down all of our debts, from smallest to largest, and then got down to the business of paying them off as fast as we can! I’ve talked about budget meetings and our budget, so today I’m sharing our debt snowball totals, when we plan to pay each debt off by, and how much we have done so far.
Our 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
Total: $37,112.99
That is one gigantic elephant we are supposed to be eating. Yikes.
One Bite at a Time
The best way to attack eating an elephant is one bite at a time. So once we wrote them all down, we quit looking at the entire list and started focusing on one debt at a time. That immediately made it so much more manageable and a heck of a lot less scary! Paying off $441 all at once is easy when you think about it. Paying off $37,112.99 seems like a completely insurmountable task. One bite at a time.
Long Term Plan
I wanted to have an end goal in sight – I needed to have an idea of when we might possibly be debt free, so I got out a calculator and did some fancy math and used a spreadsheet to calculate the deduction of our minimum payments each month along with the addition of funds to our debt snowball and all that jazz. I realized that we were 24 months away from freedom. Still 24 months, two years, TWO WHOLE YEARS, seems like a long long time when you are standing at the starting line. So I changed the word MONTHS to payments.
We were only 24 payments away from financial peace. That seems a lot more doable. 24 payments! That is it folks! And now we are a couple of payments in and, as you’ll see below, we have nearly knocked one of those payments off!
- Best Buy Credit Card – paid off by December 2015
- Student Loan #1 – Paid off by January 2016
- Spark Business Card – Paid off by February 2016
- Barclay Credit Card – Paid off by March 2016
- Student Loan #2 – Paid off by June 2016
- Student Loan #3 – Paid off by September 2016
- Student Loan #4 – Paid off by December 2016
- Capital One Credit Card – Paid off by February 2017
- Student Loan #5 – Paid off by April 2017
- Student Loan #6 – Paid off by August 2017
Where are we now?
Two months in and we have paid off $4,209.85 in debts and saved up $1,280 in our emergency fund. In addition to that we have cash flowed two trips to Oklahoma and put a new windshield on the car as well as set aside a small bit of money to register it in Texas. This is what happens when you get intentional with your money!
Best Buy Credit Card: $441.23– paid on 12/21Student Loan #1: $859.03– paid on paid on 12/16Spark Business Card: $1,409.59– paid on 1/14- Barclay Credit Card: $2,377.31 – Snowball payment of $1500 on 1/30
- 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
Yall, I still can’t quite believe it myself. I look back at this and see how fast this is happening and I can’t quite take it in that it is working and that we are digging ourselves out of this gigantic financial mess.
You can do it too!!!
If you are standing at the foot of a mountain of debt, I’m here to tell you that you can do this too. Stop looking at the mountain and take a peek at the trailhead and make a plan to conquer that first and pick up intensity as you go! You’ll have to stop and make camp here and there but you’ll eventually get over it and down the other side!
I can’t wait to share next month’s budget update as we continue to kick debt out of our house!!
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1. How to really feel your money
2. How a cash flow plan can set you free
3. How to set long term and short term goals
Plus learn how to evaluate your income and make it work harder & smarter for you!
I too am doing this plan. I was able to pay off two small debts so far and I'm in love. Becoming debt free is such hard work, but good work. I wish I had done this a year ago.
Hey Ashley! I'm in love with it too and even though it is hard work, I know it will be so worth it in the end! I also wish we had started earlier! Thanks so much for stopping by!
I'm in tears reading this post this morning. Our debt is what keeps us from living. My husband makes good money. And yet we live paycheck to paycheck. Even worse sometimes is when we run out of money before payday. Embarrassing. I'm tired of being broke. I'm tired of missing out on things because we can't afford it. It's time to take this shit seriously and knuckle down. Thanks for being so transparent with your information. It's the fact that your numbers look so similar to mine that I'm now understanding that we legit CAN do this. XOXO
These are the kinds of things that keep me encouraged!!!! You know if there is absolutely ANYTHING I can do to help you out I'm here for you! KICK ASS GIRL!!!!
Working on our budget spreadsheet this morning and then am going to transfer it to the notebook I bought yesterday. Having a spreadsheet makes my husband's heart flutter. Having a pretty notebook does the same for me. 🙂 This way we both have a way to comfortably track what we're doing and feel good about our progress. Would you be willing to share your budget notebook and how you use it – what your different pages include, etc?
Oh and another thing I struggle with – always have – is how to split this up by pay period. My husband gets paid twice a month so I can't take all the cash out at the first of the month. I can definitely do it each payday tho! And I generally pay all of our bills on his paydays based on when they're due. But that means that the first 2 weeks of the month SUCK and the second two weeks we have a bit of breathing room but that's usually when we get cocky and spend more without reason….. eating out, etc.