Oh boy, October! This year has been such a drag. 🤣 but I paid off a student loan today! Posting my update for the month earlier than usual, because I don’t foresee making any additional debt payments through the end of this month. I was unexpectedly accepted to start Nursing school in the spring (!!!) which is exciting but also nerve-wracking. So I’m shifting slightly from aggressive debt payoff mode to saving some money for school. I will receive some scholarship money from work which will help, but the rest I’ll be paying out of pocket. I don’t want to take out any additional student loans. 

2020 Starting Debt: $30,766.04

October Debt Paid: $2,366.12

Current Debt: $15,777.49

Debt Smackdown: $14,988.55 / $15,000 (99.92%)

October Update

Paid off my car loan 🎉

I am officially debt free! So happy for the support of this community. I began my journey in April 2018 and paid a total of $26,158.46 (combination of credit card and auto loan).  Some days it felt overwhelming and there were a few tears but I was persistent regardless.  I've gotten a good head-start on my emergency savings and I am tracking my progress in the savings challenge. 

Wishing everyone continued success. You've got this!

I continue to plug away at my one family loan left.

BUT - a big personal accomplishment in relation to debt!

Large medical bills (multiple bills in the hundreds) and even larger cat vet bills (multiple bills in the thousands) came at me this month and I paid them all ... without using debt or having to ask family for help!

It has been rough to take away from my savings but it feels fantastic to be able to deal with what came and then be done with it. No lingering shadow of the bills in the form of debt and interest.

Thank you YNAB. I rolled with the punches and I'm still okay.

Ok... whoosh! YNAB newbie here, just  joined last month and soooo... here are the stats:
 

Started the year with approximately $36,000 of consumer debt

Started YNAB mid-September with approximately $24,000 of consumer debt 

Now that I’m really tracking... let's get rid of the “approximately”...  before I start my October payments:

Current debt load: $23,531.56

end of year goal: under $21,000 

on track to beat that goal and then some.... so let’s be ambitious and shoot for under $19,000!

my ultimate goal is to have zero consumer debt by the end of 2021 🎈🎉🍾🎊 

It has been several months since I checked in. While I haven't been tracking here, you can still bet I've been working on my debt still! Little backtrack of my year: I was laid off at the beginning of April and was on unemployment until middle of August. I did get the extra money which ended up being more than I had been making previously. I was able to save a lot of it and grow my emergency fund. Also with federal loans being on hold until Jan 1, I had been putting my monthly bill still in that category. When I was hired for a new position in August, YAY!, I was then able to take that little nest egg and use it to tackle some credit card debt. Since then, I've been able to get that credit card down to $364 with my first payment this month with another $200 locked and loaded for the end of this month if I don't end up needing it somewhere else. Hopefully this means I'll be able to pay that card off in November! So close I can taste it! My new job is also the highest salary I've ever had so I should be able to keep being aggressive on my debt and start tackling my second/larger card. While I won't make my more aggressive goal this year of all my cc debt, I am excited to have at least 1/5 of my debt categories paid off by 2020. Also feeling very thankful that now I'm settled back in a permanent position and in a much better financial situation than I was at the beginning of the year. I'm already looking ahead to 2021 and I'll be working on that 2nd card and hopefully cutting into a consolidation loan! 

October update: Line 500

Paid $2052 towards my credit cards, truck loan, and RV loan.  

With that, I am officially over $10k in debt paydown since April when I kicked off my divorce! That feels SO GOOOD. 

There is a small chance that my ex's house refi finally completes and I get a huge lump sum payout this month as well, but I am not holding my breath about it. If that comes in, I will make another update because it will clear all of my credit cards and most of my RV loan!

It's been a very low-cost month as I camp my parents' driveway. But eventually, all good things and family patience comes to an end so this weekend I'm hitting the road to go adventuring. That will bump up my fuel costs, but I am really looking forward to seeing Redwoods and Crater Lake so it ain't no thing. :D 

October Check in. Reduced the amount owed on my cards by $980.05. Bringing the number from $25,880 in June to $21,903  in just five months.

Feeling  very accomplished this month!  We have exceeded our goal for the year already! The overtime has really been adding up lately.  We were able to pay $6267.26 towards our debt in October...$42,551.28 for the year! yay

October check-in:    

Balance from last month: $1812.09
Paid down this month: $102.27
New balance: $1709.82
Debt Smackdown Totals: $1709.82/$3885.24 = 55.99%

🐢

This is truly amazing, and it was only for like three seconds that I thought you were saying that you, farfromtheusual , had personally paid off $3.6 million in debt, and I was like, wait, are you a small municipality?

October Check-in: All hail the extra paycheck month! Payment this month was $5852, which drops me down below the $5000 remaining mark ($4607 to be exact). I have now met 88.4% of this years challenge and am only 3 more paychecks away from being debt free. It's getting so close I can taste it !!!!!

I am catching up on posting and updating the spreadsheet since I slacked off.... on that. But not smacking down the debt!  Today I made the last payment on my Home Depot CC 688.03 😁. I have not taken on any new debt and I have $3206.58 left to reach my goal to pay off 10,000 in CC's for this year. Hopefully by next year this time, I can be totally CC payment free! AMEX is officially on deck to be paid off. Happy Friday 🎉

October Check-in

Truck and Car payments were made as planned (minimums, although camper is paid).   After making the 2nd driveway payment, my mom gifted us the remainder from the proceeds of the sale of her house. 🙂❤️  True expenses are still being funded.  I'm working on funding December with October checks in case we need to take unpaid time off work due to illness.  Not feeling sick, just being prepared.

Work update:   No change since June.  Still running lots.  Regular routes are on the horizon, though.

The mortgage, refinanced from a 20-year (3 down, 17 to go, 4.95%) to a 15-year at 2.75% finally closed!  The first payment is due on December 1, but it will be made on November 18.  Once we're a month ahead, we're able to sign up for biweekly payments.  I'm not sure I want to do that yet, but I like having the option.

I bumped the car payment up by $100.  The best way to add a principal payment online to the truck loan is via our bank, so we added two big ones this month.  

MILESTONE CELEBRATION:  Thanks to my mom's generosity, non-mortgage debt is back in the mid 80s.  The truck's balance lingered in the 40s from July 2019 until the middle of this month. It's finally the focus debt.  Looks like it could be wiped out by summer 2021.

Continued prayers that the virus will be stopped soon & forever.

October update:

Started the year with approximately $36,000 of consumer debt 

Started YNAB mid-September with approximately $24,000 of consumer debt   

October starting debt load: $23,531.56 
October ending debt load:  $22,598.48

Original end of year goal: under $21,000 
New end of year goal: under $19,000

my ultimate goal is to have zero consumer debt by the end of 2021 🎈🎉🍾🎊 

If I can slay close to half of my debt in 2020, mostly on my own - I’m ready to kick the rest of it to the curb by my goal of December 2021 with YNAB’s help!!! 
 

https://images.app.goo.gl/j7ZWXXYWLmF9aVvF9

October Check-in:

Paid off in October: £2608.11
Paid off YTD: £8766.42 (87.66%)
Remaining: £1233.58 (for this year's goal) / £22,988 (total left to go)

I moved some money from savings to cover one of the smaller debts, which is why the paid off amount is higher. Should hit our goal for the year still, even though we had a few months of low payments. 

We also swapped some credit cards around to replace some 0% deals that were finishing, which meant a couple of cards didn't need payments this month.

Both of our salary payment dates have changed, which has completely thrown me off with our budgeting. I may pay minimum towards debt in November while we figure it out, then finish off December on a high note! 🤞🏼

October Update:

I've had a few months of low debt payments, I wasn't quite as focused on my debt-pay down as I would have liked... but progress is better than no progress! I paid $422.44 this month towards my debt, and I'm SO CLOSE to paying off my REI credit card (only $572.84 left!!!), then I'll only have one more credit card ($3800) and a personal loan ($4250) to pay off to be debt free! 

I'm really proud of the fact that I've paid off a little under half of the debt that I started the year off with, and that I haven't created any new debt this year! My goal was to get it all paid off this year, but even though that likely won't happen, I'm still so proud of all of the progress I've made. This has been such an amazing thing to be a part of, and it's so motivating to see everyone's progress.

Keep it up y'all! Let's finish 2020 strong! :) 

11/1 Check-in: I finally bit the bullet and put the windfall I had in savings to work, and PAID OFF MY CAR!! Just got the title in the mail yesterday,  feels SO GOOD!

So I paid $15,278 in October, taking me to 87% of goal! I don’t think I'll quite hit my goal for the year, but even if I don't, I think I'll knock out >70k for the year! I had no idea that was even possible.  "All" that's left is mortgage (250k) and student loans (150k) which is still a sickening amount, but, we're making progress!!

Well as of today, 1 Nov 2020, I have hit my goal of $12,000 paid off!!! I think I will be able to make it to $13,000 before the end of the year, which is really awesome. Its so hard in the month-to-month to see the progress but looking at the numbers overall I'm absolutely thrilled with the progress that I've made. When looking at my income, I have been able to put about 34% of my post-tax income to debt while also contributing 7% of my pre-tax income to retirement (with a 6% match from my employer)....I think those are some pretty impressive numbers for a 26 year old!! I am so lucky that I've been able to be living with my parents right now - it has helped me kick out these goals!

$293.27 this month, and stayed out of debt on the other card! I'm going to reimburse some past expenses from my HSA, which should help me get a month ahead/ pay down debt. I'm also thinking about getting a temporary distance job to throw some extra cash at it.

October progress report on my battle against the student loan beast:

As of September 30, 2020: $200,762.03

As of October 31, 2020: $197,694.37

Notes: Regular monthly payment resulted in principal reduction of $1,255.66. Made extra principal payment of $1,812.00. Total reduction of principal in October: $3,067.66.

Year-end goal is to get the balance down $44,934.56 (from $224,934.56 starting place on January 1, 2020) to $180,000.00. With a $27,240.19 reduction so far this year, I'm now about 60.62% there.

October Update

Another good month. Keeping on track with the plan. We continue to stick to the plan which is the best feeling for us as we have, as a couple, struggled to stay on plan. We also decided to replace the washer and dryer that came with the house when we bought it two years ago. We were going to keep them until they died but research showed that September/October were the best times to replace as well as end of month. Thinking ours would not last another year, we went ahead and got a great deal and were able to pay cash!! It means we are not moving as quickly towards being one month ahead but we did NOT incur any debt to do it, which we would have in the past. Woo hoo!

I have also realized that my presentation of the debt didn't show how much progress we are making. So, am going to use a different way so we can see the actual progress. We are on track to exceed this goal by $1255.92 so quite happy!

Original Goal: $34,617.61

Principal Paid: $30,089.01

Remaining: $4,528.60

Another item I thought that would be interesting to see is the impact on our interest expenses. We budget for the interest separate from the principal payment so that we can actually see how much the debt was costing us to the credit card company/bank. Even with our accounts being very low interest, it was astounding the amount we have reduced our interest expense. Also, as part of our snowball, we include the interest when we move to the next card so it can help reduce our debt faster as well.

Jan 2020 - $760.31

Feb 2020 -$743.42

Mar 2020 -$670.62

Apr 2020 -$624.20

May 2020 -$477.77

Jun 2020 -$449.29

Jul 2020 -$297.24

Aug 2020 -$291.73

Sep 2020 -$233.59

Oct 2020 -$309.45 (increase was due to a mistake in timing of payment for an RESP reimbursement that cost us $70 in interest. A forgotten transaction on my part but easily fixable)

Wowzers! We have cut our interest expense in half in less than a year. And eventually that will be zero.

October Check-in: Smashed another $13,000 on my Student Loan this month.  When I would see people with SLs at 60K-70K, that wasn't even a dream for me...it was a fantasy.  Now, I am at a $67,783.06 balance. If you could see me dancing over here!!!

Consolidated check in from the past few months.

I just returned from deployment and managed to save up quite a bit. What amounted to 2 extra car payments and a little bit extra thrown at credit cards. I've paid off 104% of my debt payoff goal as of writing this, and with luck at least one of my credit cards will be paid off in full next year. Total dollar amount paid this year: $12,339.54

Original numbers when I started  --  New Amount

Auto @ 2.9%: $23, 269.58  -- $17,482.38

CC 1 @ 0% : $11,409.25 -- $11,085.19

CC 2 @ 0%: $12,233.32 -- $12,150.25

Looking at the numbers now, I had to throw some School fees on CC 2 for my advanced degree, so the end result is it didn't move much from the original. However, I'm satisfied with the fact that I was able to pay off the fees and still make some traction on bringing the debt down from when I started.