Tamra has been begging me to sign up for a one week retreat in July (I must have become real ornery;) ) at the Francis House of Prayer. I've been telling her over and over that a week straight with the kids and being pregnant would be tough. She insists that she thinks I would enjoy it and that she would be fine. I finally gave in and signed up. I've never been on a retreat before, so I am looking forward to a new experience! It's been four years since I've escaped.
In continuation of the post I started earlier about our journey out of consumer debt, our next step was to establish a savings account and then agree that we would no longer add to our debt. That meant eventually shredding all the credit cards.
We opened a savings account at ING. It pays well and we're so happy there we also have an interest bearing checking account. Now, it's funny to think that Tamra and I, after not having a savings account, were not comfortable with Dave Ramsey's recommendation of $1000 in the bank as a short-term emergency fund while you get out of debt. We finally agreed on $1500 and put it in the bank. We accumlated the $1500 very quickly by selling, through Amazon Marketplace and Ebay, everything we could get our hands on. I also cancelled all are magazine subsrciptions and put the checks towards the emergency fund as well.
Once we put our $1500 in the bank, it was time to shred the credit cards. We shredded all the cards, except one at first. Tamra's first card had a picture of the University of Florida on it and she was attached to it (even though it had $0 balance because of the high rate). When we shreded the cards, except the UF card, I really never would have thought we would have had all that credit card debt paid off by February of the next year. Also, Tamra got over closing and shredding the UF card the following month!!!
I found a neat website to track your net worth. They'll send you an email every month to update your information. If you're shy, you can keep your profile private. I added the badge to the right hand column of my blog. It's nice to track the effects of our decisions (whether positive, negative, or neutral).
The graph goes from December of 2006 when we discovered Dave Ramsey's book, The Total Money Makeover. I also entered in February 2007 data from when we paid off the credit cards which freed us from consumer debt. Lately, I've been feeling like we've lost focus and that we haven't been getting anywhere, but it looks like we have, so that was nice to see.
More detailed net worth information is available if you click through the graph or my name across the top. That will give an idea of the categories they have for you to fill in. Clicking their logo at the bottom takes you to their home page. |
We are going to get gazelle intense with the student loans. They've been on hold for awhile because we owed $1800 in taxes, unexpectedly. To help offset that, we decided we'd have another kid (he he). Unfortunately, having another kid meant we had to write a $9,000 plus check for a one year old Chrysler Town and Country, so we will not break even for quite a while.
The good news is that in a few weeks, we should get our economic stimulus rebate and then we can throw it at my student loan. That should mean about two thousand dollars in reduced principle next month! These loans total just over $550 per month in minimum payments on the shortest repayment plan and we have about a grand per month budgeted for them. From this point on, most everything extra will go their way as well (which will hopefully add up to a lot).
So here is our goal: to pay off my student loan, over $20,000, by fall of 2009!
And for archival, here is what the progress bars looked like when we first started:
2008 Payoff Progress:
Here is a photo of the wonderful caterpillar shaped cake my wife Tamra made for Kailtyn's fourth birthday:
and here is one of her looking at the camera:
Kaitlyn, our oldest, had her fourth birthday today. Tamra's dad and his wife, Jen, came to visit. Tamra made a delecious cake in the shape of a caterpillar with Kaitlyn's name spelled out in sugar cookies and "Happy Birthday" written on small sugar cookies. A video summary is below...
