Friday, February 13, 2009

How Are We Doing?

Today I sat down and tallied up how we have done since making the decision to accelerate debt paydown. The bad news is that we owed more than I realized, $2000 more! That is depressing, and might still not be accurate, since I don't know exactly how much I owe my mother. She is sending me her records so I will update when I get them. Totally lame, I know, but now I have a spreadsheet going and will keep track of it myself.
The good news is that we made over $2000 in debt payment in the last 6 weeks, AND we paid cash for things that we have normally had to charge in years before, such as glasses, contacts, and supplies for our kitchen remodel, which is almost complete. The only real problem area is my husband's credit card, which he uses for work. He travels a lot and sometimes he writes a check for his room and sometimes he charges it. Last week he wrote a check but it overdrafted his account. So for the rest of the trip he charged his room and that actually made his account balance go UP. I want to get him to take out the money when the state pays him back and use it for the next trip, but he has never gotten into the habit of doing that. Now he is behind, so we will have to take money out of my debt payback account for him to use as cash for the next trip. Then we should see that balance go down every month, rather than up as it did this month. Such a little bit of planning can save a lot of cash. Fortunately it is a zero interest card. It will get snowballed as soon as the current card I am paying down is paid off. Only $500 left on that one, whoo hoo!

No comments:

Post a Comment