Monday, January 13, 2014

Debt Snowball Update & January Budget

I was reading back through older posts and I'm amazed at the progress we have done in the past 3.5 years. When we started actually looking at our finances and figuring things out we were $59,000 in debt. As of today, we have paid off $30,000. We have made it over the halfway point, and in that time we have had a baby, had tonsils out for 2 kids and changed a job/insurance.

I hope we can attack this debt and not take 3 more years and I feel like we can/, especially since $15,000 of that was paid off last year alone. We're down to two things: our line of credit (aka stupid tax) and a student loan. The line of credit should be gone in a year. The student loan will hopefully be gone in 2015.

Mike and I are finally on the same page with all this. We have a goal, we have a plan. We are communicating better than we ever had and watching our family blossom from our decisions and changes. We're no longer normal:

We don't own a credit card. Not one.
We don't have cable. Nope. We have an antenna so we can get basic channels and we just signed up for Amazon Prime for $79 a year. This enables us free shipping from Amazon (where we get most of the kid's Christmas stuff for FREE thanks to Swagbucks, ExpoTV and MyPoints) as well as Instant Videos so the kids can still watch their favorite shows. But we really don't watch much TV
We own both of our cars. Yup! OWN THEM. One we paid off using the snowball. The other we sold and just took the overage and bought a van. For less than $1500. It's old and it won't last us forever, but we own it and it fits our family and I couldn't be happier.
I don't have a smartphone. I know, I'm weird.
I coupon and save weekly at the grocery store.

We are living like no one else so one day soon we will live like no one else.

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