I am so excited about the month of August because it’s my birthday month! Unfortunately, my birthday falls on a Monday (how dreadful), but at least it being my birthday will be a silver lining. With it being the end of the month of course you know I’m going to give you the deets on how well we did with our budget and paying off debt.
One of the biggest things that we did was pay off EVERY SINGLE ONE of our CREDIT CARDS! (ques Gospel Choir). This something I most definitely shouted from the rooftops. It feels absolutely amazing to be completely done with those wretched plastic shackles. I think I checked my credit card account every single day after I paid it off waiting for that balance to hit $0.00. When it finally did I laid in bed and just thanked God for his amazing grace and for the ability to accomplish this goal.
After paying off all our credit cards and my car our total amount paid off to date is $13,071!! You read that right $13K in just 5 months! Next up is our mountain of student loan debts. Both my husband and I have graduate degrees and we both went out of state for undergrad and graduate school. Due to forbearances, deferments and only paying the minimum we’ve amassed a total of $180,000 in student loan debt because of all that added interest. Yep, we owe more in student loan debt than we do on our house. This number is HUGE! There is no way to even get around that, but we’ve created our Debt Snow Ball Attack plan for our Student Loans and we’re kicking into high gear.I’ve already vowed to spend no more than four years paying these student loans off and if God is willing we’ll be able to get it done in the next three. We’ve consolidated some of these loans, and others are waiting to be consolidated once I get out of this never-ending Ph.D. program. To make payments seem more reasonable, we’ve decided not to look at the big number of the Consolidated Amount but to take each individual loan step by step and pay them off that way.
Loan #1 has a balance of $5045. Since we no longer have credit card or car payments we can pay a minimum of $775 on this particular loan every single month. The hubs and I have pledged to pay this particular loan off in two months. It’s going to mean a lot of late nights and early mornings working extra jobs to come up with the add’l $3495 needed beyond the minimum payment, but I know we can get it done!
If you want to hear more about our Broke on Purpose Journey be sure to check out where it all started by visiting here (Why I chose to be Broke on Purpose)
