A lot of people these days are doing income reports for the money they make online. Personally, even though it may benefit me in some ways, I don’t want to share my income for the whole world to see. However, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I could motivate people and encourage them through our financial experience a little bit more. Then I thought about doing an income report in reverse! Instead of sharing how much I make each month, I will be sharing a debt payoff report showing how much money we put toward our debt payoff each month. You may already be following my final $10,000 debt payoff journey. If you are, these reports will go hand in hand with that. I will take you through the steps we take to plan for this money, where it comes from, and the strategies we have implemented that are working to get us out of debt. So let’s take a look at our debt payoff for April 2018.
*This post contains affiliate links through which I may make a commission. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
If you’re in debt
If you are currently in debt, there are a few main options that you have to help dig yourself out. My first tip would be to find extra money in your budget. Do all that you can to start finding or making all the extra cash that you can in order to help you tackle your debt as soon as possible. On top of creating extra debt payoff money, there are a few other options.
- Bad credit help – Do you believe your credit score or debt struggles are holding you back from getting to where you need to be in life? See this total guide from Lexington Law: What is a credit report?
- Consolidate – If you are struggling with loads of debt or a higher interest rate, I highly recommend applying for a loan with a lower interest rate so that you can tackle debt without having to pay extra in interest. Apply online with The Loan Exchange.
- Get a plan – The last thing to do is get a good plan in place!! Start coming up with your best ideas on how to pay off debt as fast as possible! For us, we chose the debt snowball method.
The Debt Snowball
Check out my total guide to the Debt Snowball and how you can get started today.
Additional income
For me personally, I have used the blog as my main source of debt payoff income. If that sounds right up your alley, I have 5 totally free blogging lessons in my course, The Fun Sized Blogging Basics so you can see if blogging is for you!
I am a big believer in finding simple, easy, quick start ways to make some extra money. Here are the best fast-track jobs to making more cash today:
- Rover – Watch dogs or walk dogs and get paid for it!! Or get a $20 credit for your dog!
- Uber – Become a driver with Uber. Set your own schedule and get paid up to 5 times her day along with chances for additional incentives in your city. Check it out!
- UberEATS – Earn extra money when you need it, day or night and deliver food instead of people! Check if UberEATS is in your area.
Our debt payoff summary
This month our family was able to put $3,600 toward our final debt payoff!! For us, that means that our Amazon credit card is officially paid off, and we have started putting all our money toward our final loam payment!
3 Major changes we made
- Stopped paying off medical bills – *UPDATE* Although it may take you longer to get out of debt when you have unexpected medical bills, it is crucial that you work to pay these. This is why you have an emergency fund in place before paying off debt.
- We started doing more than $200 – When we did our first debt payoff, we stuck with Dave Ramsey’s suggested $200 per month on top of our minimum payment. This time, we decided whatever extra we could get, we were throwing it right at that debt! The major money additions have come from me working from home on the blog. Find out how I make money from blogging here.
- We stopped saving – Yikes! This one made us nervous, for sure! But, we had already built up our savings and in following Dave Ramsey’s methods, after $1,000 in the bank, you should start paying off your debts! So, we again went to our budget, shifted some things around, and started taking the money we usually put into savings and started adding it to paying off our debt and adding to our sinking funds.
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Where the funds came from
- $30 – Our original minimum payment due on the Amazon credit card.
- $200 – This was $200 we decided to stop putting into our savings while we worked toward paying off our debt. We added this $200 in addition to our minimum payment of $30 just like the Snowball Method suggests!
- $50 – I made a quick purchase with our credit card last month for some theater tickets and used $50 of my budgeted “fun money” to pay that off!
- $264 – This was our original loan payment amount. Starting next month we will be taking our $30 from our credit card payment, plus our additional $200 for the Snowball Method and adding it to this amount for a total of $494!
- $387 – Starting a blog has been one of the biggest helps in putting extra money toward our debts month after month! This was actually a slower month, however, I was still able to put $387 toward our debt and we also used more money to get some home repairs done!
- $2,700 – Yup, we took our taxes money and applied it to our debt! This is something we have definitely never done before BUT we are really serious about no longer being a slave to debt!
If you feel like you are a slave to your debts, I highly recommend checking out Lexington Law to help resolve your major issues and struggles. Save $50 on credit repair service.
Where we’re at
We are officially done with our credit card and have just our final loan to tackle!
The Goal: A big goal (that seems tough) for us is to try making a $1,600 debt payoff for the month of May so that we are officially at the half way point of $5,000 left of our final $10,000!
If you personally are struggling to pay off debt as well, you can get access to my personal budgeting tools as well as my totally FREE, private Facebook group. In the group, I try to ask questions to help everyone get ideas from each other, learn better ways of budgeting and all around get support when it comes to personal finances!
I hope you found this post helpful and if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below!
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I really need to check into this snowball method…so awesome that you guys are chugging along on getting debt paid off!