Well, July was a challenge for our debt payoff. I’m not going to lie. We had a ton of visitors and we were a bit loose with our eating out and grocery budgets (aka, didn’t respect them at all.) Additionally, I got the fire under my butt to do a major home project and spent a ridiculous amount of money on home organization stuff. All the details are below.
If you missed out on our full plan for ditching our debt, you can catch up here.
Some things that went particularly well this month:
- Dun, dun, dun… another one bites the dust! We paid off Student Loan 2, which felt AMAZING!
- This was our first month of full benefits through Hank’s job and that allowed us to reallocate some funds and restrategize for our budget.
- I made adjustments in our budget to reflect how we actually spend money, what we value, and some additional categories now that the boys are getting older. Some examples were adjusting our contribution to car maintenance, breaking out books and clothing from our general “fun budget” into a categories of their own, and adding categories for boys’ sports and family adventures. Making these adjustments allows us to contribute to these categories throughout the year in smaller increments so the expenses are more manageable when they pop up.
Some things that didn’t go well this month:
- I got this bug in my butt wanting to clean up the garage. First, let me say, we aren’t “park in the garage” people. Hank’s truck doesn’t fit and I would lose a sideview mirror daily so we just don’t. Up to this point, we’ve worked hard to keep it organized but it’s gotten a little out of control for my liking. And honestly, we don’t need a two car garage worth of storage. What we would use is an exercise and project space. Well, one thing led to another and we purchased rubber mats for the floor and all new bins for our storage shelves to give them a uniform look. Let’s just say, it wasn’t cheap. And while we paid cash (yay for not adding to debt!), there’s a bit of guilt not putting it toward debt.
- So much food! We spent a ridiculous amount of money eating out and buying groceries. I’m good with it because it was spent to entertain people we love that we haven’t seen in a while. But I’d like to do a lot better this month.
So here’s where we stand:
| Debt | Balance: June 30 | Balance: July 31 |
| Student Loan 1 | $0.00 – YAY! | $0.00 – YAY! |
| Student Loan 2 | $547.53 | $0.00 – YAY! |
| Credit Card 1 | $0.00 – YAY! | $0.00 – YAY! |
| Student Loan 3 | $4,993.60 | $4,812.50 |
| Personal Loan | $9,221.85 | $9,176.64 |
| Renovation Loan | $10,646.98 | $10,559.42 |
| Credit Card 2 | $21,764.02 | $21,436.16 |
| Credit Card 3 | $16,875.02 | $16,560.30 |
| Total: | $64,049.00 | $62,545.02 |
Things that are keeping us motivated:
- Hanging up another colorful letter on our Debt Payoff board is so gratifying! I’m so glad we have a visual tracker to keep this real and in our face.
- Now that I have this huge project on my plate to reorganize the garage, perhaps that’ll stave off some unnecessary purchasing for a while. Haha!
You Need a Budget continues to be an amazing tool for us to plan ahead and ensure we can continue on this path. When you use this link to sign up, we’ll both get a month free!
Until next month!
xo,
Jen
You are making great progress. Even during a month when you went overboard you managed to reduce your debt by $1500. That’s great! And you were still able to have visitors and a good time.
My debt situation has changed some. I did pay off the mortgage but then bought a new car. So now all I have is credit card debt of $6,734 and a car loan of $40,000. The car payment just took the place of the mortgage payment so it has all seemed pretty seamless.
I want to share some interesting tidbits on credit rating that I experienced through these changes. First, I was expecting my credit score to decline with the new car loan. It did not make one bit of difference in my credit score. Second, paying off the mortgage and closing that account caused my score to DECLINE by 5 points!!! I couldn’t believe it. I have excellent credit so it has really no impact on me that it went down but I found it confounding that a new loan didn’t decrease it but paying off one did. I might have kept that mortgage account open as an equity line of credit if I’d known.
I just thought this was a point of interest to be made if anyone is trying to raise their credit score. Keep up the good work!