MicroSpice Perfect plan!!! 

juuniper77 I'm a little late but glad to hear about your dog!! keep it up :)

Tan Clarinet Thank you! we just took his 3 month xrays and so far, the cancer is still gone :)

jmarieb16 Is there a reason why you haven't consolidated your loans? Then you'll have one lump sum with one interest payment. It really helped me when I graduated. Here's an article from YNAB. https://www.youneedabudget.com/to-consolidate-or-not-to-consolidate-that-is-the-question/

Khaki Python The large loan is a single loan, the others are all under one loan with NelNet, and are able to be viewed as individual loans for payment purposes. I have no issues with the amounts or the interest rates as they are all fairly low, with the exception of the 6,8% interest one. Just not something I'm particularly interested in at the moment! They should be done within 4-5 years in total anyways :) 

jmarieb16  First payment has been made!! $700 so far this month towards the loans. I need to buckle down and make sure that I'm doing all I can to keep it up and also knock out any superfluous spending in my life. 

Will update at the end of the month!!

BritishMuseum  There were some errors in the thermometer and chart pages that I took the liberty of cleaning up so that they are usable, just wanted to give you a heads up! 

jmarieb16  Okay, I see.  Keep up the great work! 

jmarieb16 another thing to consider...  I'm actually planning on consolidating soon (just need to stop procrastinating!!) - If your low interest rate loans are variable it might be good to consolidate sooner rather than later to lock in a fixed rate now while they're low.  The interest rates on most of my loans increased once recently and they are likely to again soon (I believe the Fed announced interest rate hikes last month)

aurical Yes I am definitely keeping that in mind. I actually sat down with a banker at Citizen's Bank (where most people around here consolidate their loans) and they said that they can't offer me a better interest rate on my main loan than what I already have, so I'm sticking with it for now!

journeymom 

1392.22 paid in February. 

I've reworked my budget for the new year so that I can finally get out of the cycle of throwing monthly expenses/purchases on my cards each month. All cards have posted final interest charges, etc for December, so here's where I'm at! :)

Official Starting Numbers - end of 2017:

TOTAL Debt: $65,029.86 - across 12 credit accounts. Oof.

I'll be tackling these with a modified snowball strategy, i.e. focusing on paying down one account at a time while paying minimums on the others - order chosen mostly by account balance (smallest first) but with some exceptions. The total minimum payment for all is around $1500/m and I have around $2000/m to throw at this, so bit by bit I'll start to chip away at them! :)

Here are the first few, in the order I plan on targeting them:

1. EF: $1,000 (for the first couple months I'm going to throw my snowball $$ at building up a $1000 mini emergency fund; should be complete in February!)
2. CC1: $119.24 (this is a zero percent interest purchase so I've not been rushing to pay it off, but it expires in March so I'll get it knocked out in February as well)
3. DAD: $1,524.35 (when I was underemployed my Dad paid for a replacement clutch that I couldn't afford and desperately needed to maintain my gig job - he isn't expecting repayment but I've been dutifully recording 1% interest on it per month with the hopes of paying him back when I finally got a real job, which I now have! So hoping to send him a check by Father's Day to surprise him) :)
4. CC2: $1,010.08 (this has both a low balance AND a really high interest rate, so I wanna knock this out ASAP - will see if I can tackle this sooner while still reaching the Father's Day goal for #3!)
5. CC3: $1,211.75 (this card has some nice rewards, so would be a great candidate for a monthly PIF card once I pay it off, if I'm feeling disciplined enough when that time rolls around!)
6. CC4: $7,613.73 (I have a couple other cards with smaller balances, but a portion of this card's balance is at a high penalty interest rate, so I really wanna knock that out. Might even tackle this before CC3 if I'm feeling motivated enough after knocking out #1-4 completely)

Not going to even post the rest for now so I can stay focused and not discouraged, but will post more as things progress!

For now, Happy New Year and LET'S DO THIS!!!! :)

Resistant Punch Roller I know what you mean about feeling disciplined with a PIF CC. Mine is recorded in my budget as TRIAL Visa - and the rule is that any month I can’t pay it in full it gets plastic surgery. There have been a few dodgy months, particularly lately, but so far I’m still making it.

Resistant Punch Roller I'm impressed with your plan, especially the part about paying your dad back with interest! Cheers!

I've decided to try and pay off $6,000 of the loan, instead of the full $10,760.39 so I can also fund true expenses like emergency fund and vacation. I've updated my line on the spreadsheet.

MonDee  I added a $300 credit card balance I forgot about to the total, and a settlement knocked that small balance out! Nice way to begin 2018! Planning to post in my journal about everything that happened.

So amended paydown is $6400.

Amanda So many congrats and best wishes on buckling down and tackling your demons - facing those past debts is hard but it's going to feel SO good to get them cleaned up! You got this!! :)

Amanda I was in the same boat with collection agencies.  Just be transparent about how much you can afford to repay and work to pay it off. You can definitely do it. 

The key is not continuing the behavior of getting into debt which I am currently working on. 

I found this snippet on nerd wallet.  

You have a few options:

• Pay in full with a lump sum.
• Work with the creditor to set up a payment plan.
• Make a deal to settle the debt by paying a portion.  

Paying in full can get the debt off your back for good, but make sure you get the agreement in writing first. Keep this proof in case the payment isn’t recorded correctly or the debt somehow gets sold again to another collector. (This is very important)

You may also get the collector to accept a percentage of what you owe as settlement of the debt, but be careful. The debt may not be gone for good. Unless you get a written agreement explicitly stating that the partial payment will cover the whole debt, the collector can sell the remainder of what you owe to another debt collection company — which can then come after you. And the debt will be marked as a partial payment on your credit report, which won’t look good to potential creditors in the future.

No matter what approach you take, be cautious: Get the agreement in writing before you hand over money. Keep track of your communications and payments in case the creditor doesn’t stick to the deal. Written correspondence is most easily documented; if you choose to communicate by phone, record the time, the date and the name of the person you spoke with.

Full post. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/how-to-pay-off-debt-in-collections/

Amanda you can do it!  

g.359 I’m also aiming to enter 2019 with “only” student loan debt.