I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘NCN Charts’ Category

Today is my son’s fifth birthday.  To celebrate my mom came to visit from the east coast, and we had cake, a few presents, and fun with family.  My son said it was the best day ever.  I hope that he continues to enjoy the simple things in life for years to come.  And I kept my house from being overwhelmed with a huge crop of new toys, selecting things that matter and will last over a lot of little trinkets.  A win-win for me!

For newer readers of the blog, Tell All Tuesday is where I recap what’s changed as far as our debt situation since the last update.  I used to do it every Tuesday, or close to it, but once I got down to the student loan, I can only make payments to it once a month without them advancing my due dates, and I want everything that possibly can be applied directly to principal, so I only make a payment once a month.  So Tell All Tuesday has become more of a monthly affair.  But, hey, today is still Tuesday.

Since last month, we got an unexpected refund of part of our escrow account because our property taxes have gone down.  That added to the budgeted amount we pay monthly to the student loan was almost $1500, so I rounded up to make it even.  When looking at my actual amount owed on the loan, I wanted to bump it up even more to cross another thousand milestone, but we weren’t able to do that this month, so we still owe just over $7000, to be exact, $7097.86.  That payment put us at having paid off 80.53% of the total non-mortgage debt amount we owed (credit card, 2 student loans and car loan)  two years ago, when I started this blog in June of 2007.  Less than 20% to go!

The home stretch has taken longer in some ways than some of the middle steps did - it seemed we ran into a streak of good luck for a while and were able to make a lot of progress, and then hit some harder times where our progress has somewhat stalled.  But it is still moving forward, even with the adjustments we’ve made to saving a bit more preemptively against needing a new-to-us car or any financial setbacks on the work front.  And although $7000 still seems like a whole lot to me, paying off 80% of the original ~$36000 in two years makes the final 20% seem more than achievable.  Our current amount paid off is now $29353.85, and my goal is to not only knock the student loan under $7000 next month (which would happen with even our minimum payment), but to knock that paid off number up to over $30000.  Our budgeted amount (due to the change in our mortgage payment) is $543.66, so I’ll only have to snowflake at a minimum about another $150.  We can tighten our belts more than we have been, and we can make this happen.  And from there it seems all downhill… that works for me. 

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No huge changes here this month - we’ve started more aggressively paying down our student loan and putting the new-to-us car idea as a secondary goal.  Since we have two cars, and we don’t drive that much compared to the “average” driver (less than 10000 and closer to 5000 miles per year for each car, generally), we’ve decided that even if one of them does something drastic, we’ll have options to consider before having to make a decision.  So the bigger share of our $800 snowball goes to the debt ($500) and the lesser share to the car fund.  For now.

I made the $500 payment to the student loan this week, bringing the total of that debt to $8529.00.  This brings the total amount we’ve paid off since June 2007 to $27922.71, which means we have paid off 76.6% of our original debt, illustrated on my NCN Network Chart.  I am hoping to send a little more to the student loan this month as well, but that will depend on how many hours I tutor and teach taekwondo - the economic slump cuts into those some.   Holding the emergency fund steady at $2500 is my main goal for the month and that looks like it is definitely possible, but hopefully a bit of snowflaking can happen as well.  Goal for June:  Under $8000!

In other news, we went bowling through the Kids Bowl Free program I mentioned, and at least here, it is not a scam, it was really free, all the shoe rentals were free (we bought the family pass for my spouse and I to bowl) and we had a lot of fun.  And we’re doing it again tomorrow.  After which I will share some news about Capital One I received today.  I think we have a decision to make about them, even though we don’t owe them anything.

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This month marked a psychological victory of the small (but good) kind.  My student loan now stands at $8996.18, which means it is under another milestone number.  Barely under $9000, but under it is and I take any victories I can get!  :)  To accomplish this, we paid $400 towards the student loan this month instead of $300.  Since we are upping that starting in May to a minimum of $500 per month, this was practice, in a way.  Since the student loan is our last remaining non-mortgage debt, that is also the remaining amount of our original $36451.71 debt, which means that 75.32% has been paid off since June of 2007.  A lot more than I ever imagined accomplishing in two years - and June 2009 isn’t even here yet.

I’ve set up an automatic withdrawal to our “new to us car” fund for $300/month starting in mid-May.  This fund will basically double as a backup emergency fund if the $2500 we have saved (well, will have saved by tomorrow when my spouse gets paid and I top it up to that) isn’t enough for some kind of major emergency, but I am hoping it can continue to grow and serve the purpose I have assigned it.   The 1996 Toyota is still going strong at 205K miles, and the 2001 Saturn, at just over 100K, is behaving for the moment.  For the moment being the operative word, but I am hopeful, since we do not drive them very much compared to the average consumer, they will both hold up for at least the remainder of the year.  Or even for 2010 and 2011!  Heh.  A girl can dream.

Debt down, savings up - April turned out to be a decent month.  On to May, with no predictions… predictions seem to be my downfall in 2009.   The debt will be conquered yet!

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When life throws you curveballs, when all is said and done all you really can do is get back up and start working towards that goal again.  Sometimes it seems like a continuous cycle - save up some money in the emergency fund, have an emergency, empty out emergency fund, rinse and repeat.  But in the end, we’ve been making great progress over the past 2 years towards our ultimate goal of being debt free, and that is what matters.

Our first priority right now is to get our emergency fund to $2500.  With a $250 transfer I made this morning, it is back up to the original $1000.  At the end of the week I get paid, so I may be able to transfer some more money in then.  I don’t know if we will be able to get it up to the full $2500 by the end of the month, but looking at my projected income for this month I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to get it to at least $2000, barring any more unforeseen emergencies.

Our next priority is to save $10000 for a new-to-us vehicle.  Our primary vehicle has shown itself to be less than reliable, and we would like to be able to replace it without incurring additional debt, were it to have any more serious problems.   We will not start saving for this until we get the emergency fund to $2500, so it still stands at $0 right now.  This fund will also double as a backup emergency fund in the case of a very expensive emergency, but it will remain earmarked for use to purchase a new-to-us vehicle.

Our final current financial priority is to pay off our remaining non-mortgage debt, my student loan.  I made a $300 payment to this today, which is double the actual minimum, and what we’ve decided to pay to it each month until we complete the above two savings priorities (or we change the order of the priorities).   This brings the current balance owed on the loan to $9553.46.  This means that according to my NCN Network chart, we have paid off 73.79% of the total non-mortgage debt we had as of June 2007.

Nothing exciting or earth shattering happened this week, and at this point, I consider that a good thing!   I am considering re-prioritizing the student loan above saving for a new-to-us car, but I think that might be just because the Saturn has behaved for the last month.  We’ll see.  I get antsy about the debt still hanging over our head and unwilling to let it just sit with me for too long.

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Our total non-mortgage debt is now in the four figure range.

When I said that last night to my spouse, he added “For now”, because he is more pessimistic about the future life span of the Saturn than I am.  But I am trying hard to be optimistic about the Saturn surviving another year, and honestly, if it survives 6 months without any more major issues, we may be able to escape any debt in purchasing a new to us car.  If there isn’t anything else major going on.   It could happen.

As an aside, I complained to Saturn corporate about the lousy vehicle that is my primary car, as I did last year when the engine died.  This time they felt slightly more sorry for me (or wanted more to get rid of me) so they gave me a year’s membership in GM Motor Club to placate me.  Since I wasn’t expecting a single thing, it did somewhat placate me.  And for the next year, if the car breaks down I can call them to tow it, so there’s that.

Back to the debt demolition!  Yesterday I made my “new” $300 payment to my student loan.  We are still building up our emergency fund, so I probably should have just paid my $145 minimum payment, but I am stubborn like that.  I like to feel like I am making progress.  This knocked the balance of my student loan down into the four figure range, and since it is our last remaining non-mortgage debt, that makes our debt total in the four figure range as well.  Here are the numbers:

• Debt at start of blog (6/19/07) : $36,451.71
• Current total as of 01/13/09: $9798.95
• Principal paid to date: $26,652.76
• Broken down into:
  • Student loan (at 7%): $9798.95
  • Credit Card: PAID OFF 2/7/08
  • Spouse student loan(at 9%): PAID OFF 10/7/08
  • Car loan(at 4%): PAID OFF 11/14/08
• NCN Network Chart % debt paid off:  73.12 (last update, 72.48)

This month, the priority is to get our emergency fund to $2500.  Then, everything beyond that $300 monthly student loan payment will go to my newly established ING subaccount, the “new car fund”.  I am aiming for at least $1500 per month (starting in February) deposited in that account.  That has a strong possibility of not being met every month, but that is the goal.  With the economic slowdown, I’ve had less tutoring hours available to me, and my internet properties are not earning as much money as they had been.  Couple that with the blasted snow here that has canceled taekwondo classes a few times already in this new year, and my earnings aren’t quite as high as they used to be.  But we will do our best to save every penny that comes to us that we can and put it away for a new to us car.  Once we get that fund to about $9000, we’ll shift gears to paying off the student loan at a much faster rate and save $300 a month towards the car.

Our emergency fund is currently at $1000.  We should be able to get it to at least $2000 by the end of the month, but I am not sure about $2500.  We’ll see.  On to next month and another month of four figure debt!

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