Gold Song Hang in there! Progress comes in spurts, and is rarely a perfect linear advancement. You made some big headway into your debt, and you may need to slow down for a bit while you roll with the punches that recently came your way. But you'll move forward, and once you've rolled with those punches, you'll be ready to take on the rest of the debt. Sometimes when life feels like you're going two steps forward and one step back, over and over again, always remember that you are still moving forward overall.

Gold Song 

Consider my "like" a hug of support.  My financial journey did a really dramatic rollercoaster wave in the first 16 months. Exciting times and not all "nice" exciting.  I remember that I worried about what it would do to my budget, then I reminded myself that the budget is not the goal. The budget will simply be a reflection of my life like a completed journal, and that is exactly what it has become.  Do what needs doing.  I would encourage you to take your time when making any big spending or life decisions to ensure you are not making poor decisions for entirely emotional reasons.  It will be a little bumpy, but there are better smoother roads ahead.

Gold Song Life happens. Good and bad stuff, you had both. It's okay to put debt on hold while you sort out the other parts of your life. That's not failing, that's being sensible.

Gold Song Using "Like" to signify "Hugs" as well. Take care of yourself.

Gold Song You are doing great. Life happens, and it's not a failure for anyone, not even you. You're not that much more special than the rest of us! 😉

Give yourself some time to step back and re-evaluate, but most importantly, to heal and take care of yourself.

Gold Song *hugs* Hey, I dunno what the situation was, and I'm not gonna say who was "righter" or "wronger".  What I'm gonna say though, is that if the break up was messy, you're probably better off in the long term without the guy (which doesn't make breaking up suck any less).  Is it gonna throw short-term financial wrenches in the works?  Absolutely.  But you didn't start utilizing a budget for short-term reasons.  You're using it for long term reasons, and in the long term, it'll do its job.  Heck, in the short term, it'll still do its job, it just won't be so pretty. *hugs*

tl;dr: *hugs* break-ups suck; you're probably better off (once it stops sucking so bad); keep on going, you'll get there.  *hugs*

MicroSpice That's how I feel. I am starting to doubt being able to hit my payoff goal this year, but I figure if I try my best my total will still be a lot less than it is now. 

MicroSpice 

Your new floors is my new driveway.  Did you know that asphalt could have ruts?  Neither did I!  Ever so much fun when trying to shovel snow or walk to the car in the dark!  We'll be lucky if we don't have potholes before we can get the money together.  

Technicolor Cheetah I hear yall on the floors and driveway! I have a giant mud hole that's been there since Oct that's the driveway-to-be.... Between the rain, mud, and funding issues it's still a dirt hole waiting to be a driveway. It'll get there eventually...

Purple Butterfly  Pay-off of $100,000 in just two years - that's amazing progress! Just think... at this rate you'll be free of your non-mortgage debt in a year!

Purple Butterfly 

You've paid over $97,000 since you started YNAB, if I did the math right!  That is really awesome!  In addition, I'm assuming that with YNAB you've corrected or are correcting the issues that caused the non-mortgage debts which is also wonderful.  Obviously you've had to build better habits to have gotten this far and that can be hard, so trust that you're making great progress and personal growth!  

Remember, like with extra weight, it took you some time to accrue the debt, so it's going to take some time to divest yourself of it.  It's also ok to to take a month here and there where you don't apply as much to the debt but divert to true expenses and some just for fun stuff (budgeted and within reason, of course).  It can be hard to sustain breakneck pace as I'm sure you're aware!

Slate Blue Pilot That’s what I’m hoping, that 100k did include money from an unexpected windfall, but you’re right I need to focus on how far we have come. Thank you 😊 

Technicolor Cheetah  YNAB has been an incredible help! I was using a spreadsheet for about 3months before I found YNAB, It’s the knowing exactly how much you have allocated for everything that’s really helped me.

I also took some advice from the Barefoot Investor, I didn’t realise that you can negotiate the interest on your credit cards, we rang the bank and they dropped the rate from 19% to 3.5%

Thank you for reminding me of the growth that it’s taken so far, it’s too easy to forget that and just see the negative that you got in trouble in the first place.

The thought of relaxing and taking a break for a month actually terrifies me.

Purple Butterfly 

Purple Butterfly Some people do better with intermittent rewards when trying to implement a new behavioral habit.  So you don't always deny yourself the things you've mostly cut from your budget.  Maybe you go out with friends or host a dinner party.  Maybe you catch a movie in the theater instead of waiting for Netflix.  Maybe you get a pedicure or haircut with your old stylist instead of Supercuts or the Flowbee.  (link is a Flowbee Pinterest pin)

If you think it's too dangerous and you might backslide, then don't.  You know yourself best and how not to set yourself for failure.

Technicolor Cheetah It’s definitely important to reward yourself along the way, we allocate a weekly amount for “date night”, even if it’s just fish and chips on the beach, or a picnic in the park we try and make it special. We also allocate some personal discretionary money.

I have never heard of a Flowbee before, I cut the families hair, learned over several decades, and many early disasters when the kids were little, though i’ve never been game to do my own, will have to look into it 🙂

Purple Butterfly 

I was joking on the Flowbee.  Sounds like you already are making sure to keep small treats and rewards which can be very important.  People who go out for lunch every day at work to brown-bagging it every day are less likely to be able to make the change stick because it's too big a change all at once.  Maybe you pack lunches 1-2 times a week for a month. Then 3-4 days a week for a month.  Then you go out once or twice every couple weeks.  Cold turkey sometimes works but sometimes you get the yoyo diet effect, budget style - too much austerity all at once leads to spending sprees.  Small incremental changes are easier to sustain.

Purple Butterfly Well I’ve updated my final figures for the year. 

I didn’t hit my goal of $21,993.46 but I’m happy with the $13,361.26 - 60.75% of the target.

I had a difficult last half of the year, with my Lupus raising it’s ugly head and my daughter needing significant financial help when her marriage broke down, so pretty stoked when I look at the figures!

Happy New Year!

Wanted to Add: (and it seems frivolous to add an aside after only a week) But making a post here and entering data on the spreadsheet has seriously kept my goal in the forefront of my mind all week. So much so that I elected to allocate discretionary funds over to my debt. The realization that it was my personal money to spend (outside of the budget), and that it was my name on the mortgage, and if I wanted to spend my personal money to reach my goal, then I could absolutely do that. I never really thought about spending my discretionary money on my debt, and usually left the main budget to handle it. I think I will make it a mini goal this year to keep seeding some of my fun money over into my debt. Small steps still mean great rewards. 

Navy Blue Colt I love that idea! Thank you! 

Sea Green Lightning Many banks and credit unions in the U.S. have notaries available free of charge, if you have an account with the bank.  Is that an option for you? 

Sea Green Lightning I second checking with your bank. You already bank there, and they will often do it for free. I hope you can find that as an option!

Slate Blue Vacuum *hugs* self employment is a whole 'nother ball game in terms of money management.

farfromtheusual Yup and thanks for responding. My usual response to this is shopping *we'll never be debt-free anyway why bother* or eating. Accountability helps. 

Slate Blue Vacuum I have the same feelings sometimes, you feel so deep in the hole that it doesn't seem like it's worth it to try to climb out. But I remind myself that I'd rather not be in debt forever, either. Sometimes it's tough to keep up with the interest in my business, along with all my expenses. My business is a tiny fry right now, though, compared to most, but that doesn't make it any easier.

In the long run, though, I wouldn't trade the self employment for anything. It's just a matter of working out how to keep things balanced when the income isn't.

Slate Blue Vacuum  farfromtheusual

Ideally, someday you'll be able to budget ahead and keep what you absolutely need plus a little in each month and then have additional months' funded in times when you aren't short 10x what you expected.  So instead of splurging and spending freely on the rich months, you fund one month or more into the future in case next month's income is less than desirable, and then maybe have a small splurge now and again.  Actually, if a lot of your income is variable, you might consider putting off some of your debt repayment for a month or four so you can build up a bit of a cushion to ameliorate crummy months.

*hugs* I know it's hard.  Good luck!    

Technicolor Cheetah Yeah, that's where we are... 2 years into YNAB. Time was (before kids) we were always living on last month's money. This was even before I knew about YNAB. Our income didn't expand enough to have kids/daycare/+ our bonus kiddos (our godkids lived with us for a while with no parental contribution). Then, DH's business almost folded in 2016. It's just one step at a time to get out. Our debt isn't insurmountable based on our income, but the variability of his income makes it difficult to imagine ever being debt free AND with a really great AOM. My income increased by 65% this year, so it's helping, but our cost of living also increased about 30%...and we had a 2nd kid. And our godkids MAY be coming back...it's a whole thing. It's hard to budget for what you don't know. We are definitely rolling with the punches, but my goal is ONLY to not let disappointment cause me to spend (or eat) unnecessarily! 

farfromtheusual You totally get it. Thanks ❤️

Slate Blue Vacuum Yeah. It's really really hard. You have a lot on your plate. Give yourself some credit for hanging in there this long!!

Slate Blue Vacuum something I’ve found helpful is to record each day what I DIDN’T do to prevent me from reaching my goals. So for my weight loss goal  for example, I’ll record that I didn’t stop at the store for chocolate even though it took every ounce of will power I had - heck, that goes on my budget goal too because chocolate isn’t cheap. It’s a new thing for me, just learned it this week, but the scales are a whole kg kinder than they were on Monday, and it’s becoming immensely satisfying writing my list at the end of the day. Remember, it takes time for small steps to build into something significant, especially as it feels like you are getting nowhere, but suddenly (the experts say about 27 months average) the cumulative effects take over and you will be a significant way ahead of where you would have been if you’d done nothing. Hang in there, you’ve got this, and remember to budget yourself a tiny bit of freedom/fun money just to use when you feel that urge to give up. The urge will come less frequently as you have more history and can see the down lines on the graph slowly start to dip less low.

WairereRose I love this and I'm going to try it! Thanks for responding.

WairereRose excellent idea.

NewDawnNewDay I got it from Darren Hardy on one of his Darren Daily clips.

WairereRose Cool idea!

Sky Blue Sidewinder why are you spamming this forum?

farfromtheusual I just blocked their account but is there a reporting mechanism to forum moderators?  This thread is already big with real comments, doesn't need to be inflated with spam.  :D 

PugsBugs I have no idea if there's a way to report someone or not. I hope they get it taken care of quickly because that's just rude (and probably illegal...).

farfromtheusual PugsBugs

Thank you for pointing this out! All forum comments are sent to us for review, but these slipped in after we had left for the evening. We've cleared them out now. :)

Going forward, if there's a particular comment you'd like for us to take a second look at, you can flag it and that will notify us.

PugsBugs farfromtheusual

If you look next to the name on a post, to the right (on laptop, don't know about mobile), you'll see three vertical dots.  Clicking on that brings up a drop down menu with Report Post.  I assume that works.

Technicolor Cheetah Awesome! I admittedly went straight for 'block user' because I don't want to see any more spam

PugsBugs  they may have been hacked, rather than being the actual user. It did start out “I am a hacker...”

Gold Song Progress is progress! And that's something to stay positive about. 😄

Gold Song Why compare, this month isn't the previous month. You're doing the best you can, and it is going the way you aim for. That's pretty good, really.

Move Light Sound Life awesome! Stay the course!! 

Move Light Sound Life

I just realized I should be posting my updates on this sub thread so they don't get lost.

April update: just confirmed payments totaling $3506.80, which makes the student loan balance 19517.84. 

Ahead of schedule, may pay off loan by January! Then we'll put money to a needed car replacement and almost necessary home improvements.

Move Light Sound Life 

Payments are made to the tune of $2,433.17 to the student loan, bringing the total down to $17175.07.  Looking ahead through the summer, we may need to lower the extra payments to take care of other things - hope the paydown is not impacted too much!

Move Light Sound Life I'm a little worried about the June extra payment. We will probably have to save it in order to take care of some family things. While this is important, and paying the student loan off by February 2020 is nearly as good as January, I don't want to have the slippery slope of other major things impacting each month... But that is out of my control. We can only hope and pray for the best situation, and the wisdom to make the right decisions. :)

And be thankful that we can handle this so far without extra debt!

Move Light Sound Life You gotta take care of you. It's better to not slide further into debt while trying to pay off debt. So do what you have to do!

Move Light Sound Life 

Ok, so we have another priority for the extra debt payment this month, which means we will only make the minimum payment on the student loan for June. 

If there's anything left over, we'll add it to July.

This will put our payoff date in February (maybe, but hopefully not March) of next year, which will be ok. As long as we don't have too many (any?) more events like this, it will be ok. 

But, no need to add debt, we're not "wanting" for important things, and maybe my Dad is interested in YNAB. Good things!

I just don't know if I should lower the goal in the spreadsheet. Our original goal was doable if we maintained a somewhat limited living budget, with no unplanned/large expenditures, and threw everything else at debt.

There's not much left to cut, and it certainly won't add up to $2000 over 6 months, so maybe the original goal should have been the stretch goal. But it would have been too easy to think we were meeting the easier goal without as much scarcity, so I'm glad we didn't start out that way. Maybe I'll leave it and see what happens. We won't meet it, but we can see how close we get.

Gray Router 

A well-reasoned and altogether good way to use your return!  I know sometimes it's not fun now, but think of what you'll be able to do in the future without your debt hanging over your head.  I especially think the emergency fund is a smart choice.  

Gray Router Excellent way to use the tax return! Was it significant because of tax credits or because you are withholding more than needed?  You could consider changing withholding to have more money in your paycheck to add to debt.

NewDawnNewDay it's both actually. Here in Quebec Canada tax deduction are made by the employer on each pay so I have little to no control over the amount. I know it could be less because I also make good use of the different tax credit available band tax free savings account.