March check-in: I had a lot of money going on and off the cards this month, but I still managed to end up with a net positive debt payment. For a (very) brief shining moment, I even managed to get both of my credit cards under $1000, which hasn’t happened for probably the last decade or so. A budgeted-but-not-enough car repair put paid to that right quick, but it’s still really exciting to see how close I am! I used to have three cards with balances but I paid off one during the Smackdown last year and I actually feel like I’m going to succeed in paying off the other two during this year, which is incredible. I paid a total of $2638.43 towards the cards but also charged a total of $1798.00, so my net paydown was $840.43 (with an additional $129.90 for my installment loan, for a total of $970.33 on the spreadsheet)

March update  

Starting debt from February: $10,734.34
Paid down this month: $61.52
New debt amount: $10,672.82
Debt Smackdown Totals: $1,387.28/$4,500.00 = 30.83%

Definitely not too much progress made this month - still in the right direction, but I had some extra spending come up that couldn't be avoided. I'm a tad worried this might continue a bit into next month, but I'm going to do my best to keep everything in control and under budget.

Official March update - 

Ended at $1742 paid to debt.  All store credit cards are now paid off!  Goal now is to only use them if I already have the cash on hand to pay them off immediately.  

Next big debt is the car.  After April's payment clears, it will be just over $1000 left on the loan.  We're hoping to scrape together enough in April to pay it off May 1 but that might be tight.  

Ultimate goal is to snowball a good bit of the car payment onto other debt but we will probably use it through the summer to help pad some other funds first.  Getting there!

March debt update for the challenge. Not adding budgeted balances on the credit cards:

Debt Payoff (current owed/original balance 1/1/2019)
Horse vet: 0/$135
Capital One #2: 0/$1,435.97
Kohl's: 0/$1,093.64
Chase: 0/$3,066.19
Capital One #1: 0/$4,851.90
Personal Loan: 0/$8,344.37
NEW Personal Loan: $17,762.31/$18,289.00
Truck Loan: $16,477.04/$18,358.81
Student Loans: $22,553.20/$22,740.19

February Debt paid: $740.79

2019 Debt total (paid/current owed/original owed): 
$3,233.46/$56,772.55/$60,026.06

My monthly payoff will stick around that $750ish for a while since I'm saving for a down payment on a home purchase. This is a change from my expected debt payment but I refinanced all the high interest stuff so ultimately I'm still getting ahead. I'm also still helping my sister dig out a bit so her rental income has been cut in half for a while now and most of that went towards debt.

Three months down and I've paid off 2100 out of my 10,000 total!! Been killing it working two jobs and 60 Hours a week (sleep if for the weak lol 😂)  Should get my tax return soon which will knock another 1,000 off and lower how much I pay in interest.  

Been super rough working two jobs and getting my first home set up, but all worth it in the end.  

Paid the minimum on my debts this month. Have set up auto payment to pay $100 extra on my car payment April 1 so all of it will go toward principal. If I may $100 extra each month it'll be paid off by December but I'm shooting for September.

Checking in for March.....

Had extra to throw at the car this month thanks to our tax refund and the extra hours my hubby has been working!  Trying to get that sucker paid off by December of this year 😊

Starting balance                                                        Ending balance

$67,321.24                1st Mortgage                         $66,818.48

$14,977.66                2nd Mortgage                       $14,765.81

$16,493.66                Car                                               $13,769.90

$98,792.56                                                                       $95,354.19

Total debt paid down in March $3,438.37.  YTD 2019 = $8,377.66 (32.04% of goal).

ok, I've been in just wanted to make sure I was really in and took some actions already.

I am working on my CC debts using undebit.it and YNAB. Here is what I've done so far:

Jan 26th: Finally faced the music - $41,560 total  Credit Card debt, over 4 cards

Jan 27th: I got two personal loans to cover about $24,000 of that debt, decreasing my interest rate from 21-23% to be 11%-14%, both of them 5  year loans. Yes, I got them both in the same day, so they couldn't report on each other. I also froze my Chase and Discover credit cards. Bank of America did not have a way to freeze their CREDIT Card on their website, nor did it have as customer-friendly a site as Chase and Discover, so I  picked that one being the one I close  once i have it paid off.  I reported the card lost and asked them not to send me another one, knowing I'd close it soon.

Kept $10500 on my Credit Union credit card that has 7.9% interest, and that is the only one not frozen, as it has a couple subscriptions and it's under tight control.

In Jan, with all this consolidating and cleaning up remaining bits on the CC's I put the loans to, I also put $1390 in payments towards the CC's.

Feb 15: started decreasing credit limited on Discover (from 15k to 5k) and Chase (from 13k to $500). I do not need a total credit card limits of  75% of my current take-home salary,  credit cards are crazy, yo!

Feb 20: Paid $6,826, which included  an gift of $5000 from my mom, which allowed me to pay off the Bank of America credit card.

March 10: confirmed BofA was completely paid off, and called them from the local branch and closed the card. Yay! Down to 3 cards, 16k total credit limit. That's a total credit limit of 30% of my take home pay. That's manageable...  still a little high for me, but the CU credit card has the lowest rate of everything so it will stay for a while maxed out as a third "loan".

Mar 25: Paid $942 to the loans, (a little light this month as we are also paying our 2018 tax bill.)

March 29: Checked Credit Karma, which confirmed my Bank of America Card was closed in good standing. Yay!

So, short form - started in Jan at $41,560, paid off $4,158 with my own money, plus $5000 from mom. Plus, at much lower interest rate now, and I set up some major blocks on the credit bleeding. A decent 2 month start so far.    

March check in - managed to pay $1516 off my tax debt, leaving me just under $1500 of it to go. Hopefully April will see me pay it all off, and then I can move on to the credit cards. 

March Check-In: Paid $3,526.28 toward debt. Some of this pay down is because my husband worked a couple of holidays and some extra weekends. We have officially paid off 8 of the 11 credit cards we carried debt on! The last two have much bigger balances, but momentum is on our side now!

March Check-in: Paid $1250 (includes P&I)

I am sitting on some cash from an annual bonus that I am aiming to be thoughtful about. This past year I've spent minimally on stuff like clothes, wearables in general, stuff for my home, and hobbies (music, sewing, art!) so I want to allocate some of the bonus for that. Also I want to pay off cc#1 and add to savings for xmas, gym membership, pet rent, car repair expenses, and general emergency fund. So many things I want to do with the money! And a set amount of cash.  Going slow with the decisions to be made about it feels like growth thanks to YNAB and this challenge :)

March checkin - paid standard mortgage, and a little extra off the credit card. little by little...

March Check in - €648 was all I could manage for March. Added to the document. 

I paid 40% of my credit card debt between March and April... it's a pretty big hit on my income but I'd rather be frugal now and have less burden later. My credit card has no interest until July 2019, so my goal is to pay it in full before then. Luckily, with some advantageous tax changes in the US, my tax burden should be less for 2018 and I may even have a return on my estimated taxes instead of having to pay more. If that happens (as it should, but I'll believe it only when I see it), I should be able to pay my credit card debt in full immediately before the end of April... fingers crossed!

April - target is $1000, but as I can already pay $700 I've done that right now so I am not tempted to WAM and play around too much.  The s/s tells me this puts me at just over 25% of my target debt paid!  Yay.  Now to wait for the end of the month, see what it brings and see if I can do that extra $300 also :)