A lot of people these days are doing income reports for the money they make online. Personally, even though it maybe 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 March 2018.*This post contains affiliate links through which I may make a commission. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
If you yourself are struggling to get out of debt and having yet heard about the Snowball Method, you can read my post all about how we paid off $6,000 in just 6 months! If you are totally unsure of where to start I highly recommend following Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps as laid out in Financial Peace University. Another great idea is to get yourself set up with a free credit consultation to see if you are able to dispute any of your debts!
This month our family was able to put $800 toward our final debt payoff. For me this meant finally paying off the new laptop I bought when I started blogging almost a year ago. We had just been making the minimum payment ($30) plus an additional $20 for a total of about $50 per month to pay it off. Naturally, as per usual with credit cards, it was taking forever!
After downsizing 2 years ago, Tom and I got serious about getting ourselves out of debt. Downsizing freed up a huge amount of money for us each month by reducing our monthly mortgage payment. Then, when we paid off $6,000 of debt, we also gained an additional $800 per month! Instead of continuing with our debt payoff, we decided to start saving, improve our budget, and get better about our sinking funds. Then, at the beginning of this year, we joined Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and have really kicked our finances back into gear.
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If you feel like you are a slave to your debts, I highly recommend checking out these 2 companies that offer free debt analysis: CuraDebt and Credit Assistance Network. Because they both offer free consultations, it would be a good idea to get information from both to make sure you are making the best financial decisions for you and your family.
Because we were able to put more toward our credit card this month, I believe we will be able to pay it off next month and easily put any additional funds toward our final loan (which is our big one.)
Since we were also able to make repairs to our cars this month, I’m hopeful that after going over our budget, we will potentially be able to put even more of our original savings funds toward our final debt.
The Goal: The goal is to hopefully have these final debts paid off by August 2018 instead of the 3 years it would take if we continued to make minimum payments!
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!