Dawn D I have definitely been there (and, um, beyond- there was a point where my monthly credit card payments were 4 figures). I'm now on the other side of things, with no more credit card debt, and it feels amazing. You can do it!!

Violet Drill Thanks! I'm glad that I'm realizing this before I hit 4 figure payments. I was definitely heading in that direction. 

Dawn D You can do it! Laying things out really makes a difference. No shame or guilt needed. Easier to say than do, I know. Now you're creating a plan with your budget to move forward and pay it down!

Nicole Thanks! I just watched one of YNAB's YouTube videos and realized I haven't used Ynab correctly, like the abuse of rule 3...

Dawn D Was it this video? Hannah is the best. 😂 I like using the mobile app to check my categories and find the money first!

Nicole yes it was! I've been using YNAB for over 2 years and I was using it as an ideal budget instead of real numbers. 

Nicole WOW!  Just watched that video.  I am learning SO much from this forum.  Thanks everyone!!!

MXMOM I know you said this isn't your perfect vacation, but riding horses in the ocean in Malaga is definitely perfect vacation-esque. I hope you have an amazing time and that you can start planning your perfect vacation for the future!

MXMOM it's an eye opener when you realize it. Unfortunately I lost my job and started skipping payments. It took me about 5 or 6 years to pay that card off.

Steel Blue Inspector It's never too late to join in! 

June2022 a combination of what makes you feel the best and what is most practical are the best places to start. If you can knock out the car loan faster than Dec, you'll probably save a little bit on interest, and you'll be able to snowball that amount to your bigger debts faster. undebt.it is a great place to start and experiment with different options to see what saves you the most money, and while you're playing with it you can tune in to what makes you feel the best along the way, which I have come to learn is critical for success. So don't go with what the "experts" say just because they say it. If that advice makes you feel terrible along the way you won't be successful.
And welcome to the party!

farfromtheusual after reading this, I went undebt.it and plugged in 6 credit cards. When I ran all the "plans" I decided on debt/ratio. Undebt.it made everything so clear! I had only planned to focus on 4 credit cards but now I think I will add the other 2. (Plus the planned pay down of my truck and a LARGE overdue bill from last month) I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew???

Cyan Yeti if you are, then you can always adjust course and recorrect. That's part of learning to navigate things, it's never really static. Tools like undebt.it will help you see the bigger picture of what option will have the most impact for you so you can feel successful the fastest.

Good luck!

Tomato Barnacle I know you said January wasn't the best month for paying off debt, but it sounds like February is making up for it - great job getting those ducks in order this month! 

And congratulations on your new nephews! :)

Tomato Barnacle awesome way to restructure and get clarity at the same time. Those little realizations make a big difference between success and staying stuck. Way to go.

Slate Blue Vacuum Saving money when faced with unexpected expenses and a slew of rough months is a feat to be proud of! I'm rooting for your self-employed ventures! :)

Slate Blue Vacuum Congrats of the year of self employment! It comes with it's own unique challenges, but I wouldn't trade it for the world!

farfromtheusual Thanks! This is the end of year 8 for DH in self-employment/entrepreneurship. Hoping this year will be the big one!

Slate Blue Vacuum people have no idea how long it takes to really make headway as an entrepreneur! Kudos to yall for sticking it out!

farfromtheusual Thanks. It’s great until it’s not. When it’s not it’s REALLY not.

Slate Blue Vacuum Yeah, I feel your pain!!

Lavender Jackal Have you set up the mortgage payments as scheduled transactions in YNAB? That way it shows you when you are underbudgeted for upcoming commitments.

Lavender Jackal Doh. It's still early on in the challenge, and there is plenty of time to turn it around! Since MXMOM mentioned Scheduled Transactions, here's a link. That way you'll see an alert if there is an upcoming transaction that hasn't been budgeted for. Let me know if you have any questions!

Lionel Vehemently is a great way to tackle those debts - big or small! I'm happy you're joining us! :)

Yes, it's fantastic motivation! Welcome to YNAB, and the challenge, Team AOAL 2020 . 🎉

Sky Blue Wizard 

Big goals but a straight trajectory.  Cheering you on.

Powder Blue Sound Some months are like that! What are you remodeling? We're hoping to start that process next year. 🤞

Orchid Display Every bit counts!!  Take care of your self 🤗

Orchid Display I hear you on the mental health. My strategy has been to try to find smaller (cost) things that meet that need to be out there buying something. Also, I talk to myself while I'm driving - encourage myself - "You just need to drive past this ONE store, you can do this, and then there are no more stores to catch you on the way home". Sometimes there is more than one store still to pass, that's a little trickier. I can adjust my route sometimes, or do a store countdown with that 'you can do this' refrain. Hang in there. As your goals get closer to becoming reality your motivation surges more often and it gets a little easier. Remember not to beat yourself up when you slip - that just makes the guilt buying worse and it's a downward spiral. Reassure yourself that you only spent x instead of the usual y or more, and you're still closer to getting out of this hole than you would have been if you hadn't made any changes at all.

Powder Blue Song (44d53057347e) Woohoo! Congratulations on your progress. I've found that adulting doesn't get easier but you do get better at it with practice. 😂

MoneyMonster I love that you're using the refund to get ahead. That tactic served me well in the Smackdown last year! Sending off the last payment to the card is going to feel pretty great. 

Pink Mermaid Finally found myself.  lol

Pink Mermaid With so many people on the spreadsheet getting lost can be easy! If you use ctrl+F (or command+F on a Mac) it will open a search bar. :)

Faness I did not know this...

Full February update now that my last debt payment of February processed.  Both of my credit cards are paid off!  And no more need to put anything but my husband's business expenses on there, for which he will be reimbursed.  He should get a corporate card soon, but I'll still throw some budgeted expenses on there and our other cards from time to time just to keep them active.  January vs. February below.

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$2,398.49 - the extra $274 I was able to put to this helped with the interest.  It's less than $8/month at this point...this one will be history by October or November!  My husband looked at me like I was nuts when I said that I wanted us to buy our next car with cash (that's a long way away, though).  I can't even fathom handing over a check for a car and walking out without a monthly payment to stress about.  How cool will that be?

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$11,497.35

School Loan - $37,532.77/$37,264.08

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$32,270.94

Progress feels good, y'all.  $4212.51 of principal paid this year, 21.06% complete! 😎

March update - 28.17% done.  In a time of such uncertainty for many, my husband and I are incredibly fortunate that we both work in high-demand industries.   Our jobs are (relatively) safe for now and we're trying to help as we can.  With the quarantine, the fact that I'm working from home and school is cancelled for the academic year, we no longer have to pay for before/after school care for our 10-year-old son - that's $500+ a month we get back.  Great time to work on getting a month ahead (we're close) + an emergency fund and to stay on track with our debt payments as usual.  I track all this on a spreadsheet and monthly interest is going down slowly but surely.  Still an ugly number, but going in the right direction for sure.  I might nerd out and create some graphs to make my analyst brain happy.  

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$2,044.66 - so close on this one I can taste it!  It'll be done by September at the latest.

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$11,330.61

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 - you better believe I'm throwing my snowball at this one since federal student loans have 0% interest through at least September.

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$32,270.94

Gfamily46 there are some silver linings, aren't there??

farfromtheusual Yes there are! 

April check-in:

So in light of the school loan 0% interest thing until September, my husband and I decided last month to still keep budgeting out for the regular school loan payment + extra $300 snowball.  Then we'd keep it as a temporary EF and then pay it all towards principal before the 0% interest expires if our jobs stay stable.  We changed our minds this month and decided to keep all that money in our EF since we only have 1k in there right now.   That school loan is going to hang out for a while and while throwing $4k-ish in principal is tempting, it's more important to have something to fall back on, especially in this climate.  I doubt we'll hit our $20k principal goal for the year unless a windfall happens, but that's TOTALLY okay.  Any progress is still progress - 33.21% done.  

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$1690.68 - good to see this one under 2k!

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$11,149.02

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$31,315.53

Gfamily46 the good news is you can change your mind a million times between now and when the interest hits again :) And you may, and that's ok. Whenever that time arrives you'll know if that's the right decision, and you can do it without a second thought.

Gfamily46 Good idea to let the money sit! :)

May check-in!  Whew, what a month.  So throwing my husband's deferred student loan payment and our $300 monthly snowball into a temporary EF proved to be a life-saver.  We had finally gotten a month ahead with a small 1k emergency fund on top of the temporary one and our upstairs heat pump finally took a crap.  I made a heat pump category a couple months ago because we knew after 16 years, the poor girl was hanging on by a thread.  But I only got around to putting about $60 in that category.  We have a fantastic HVAC company and they quoted us a shade under $7k for a new one. 😖  Any other company easily would have hit us well north of $10k, so counting our blessings there.  Sooo, I really had to do some creative WAMing and depleted our EFs, but by the time our cc payment for the amount is due in July, it'll be totally paid off, no interest accrued!!  $7k stings, but not as much as adding $7k on top of our debt and paying way more in the end.  My husband was floored when I told him we could pay in full.  38.33% to our goal and rolling with the punches in our nice, cool office upstairs. 😁

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$1335.37 - almost there!

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$10,963.62

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$30,875.61

Gfamily46 That makes you feel SO good when you can manage that! Way to go!

June check-in and here we go!  This month, I've needed a good kick in the pants to start focusing on accomplishments instead of shortcomings.  So last month was when our heat pump died and we had a new $7k one installed.  This past week, I sent the final payment to Chase to totally pay it off and no interest accrued.  THAT IS HUGE and I keep telling my husband that it would have crippled us pre-YNAB.  It would have gone on our cc, cost us a ton in interest and we'd just leave it in purgatory until that magic payoff date that we knew for a fact would never come. 🙈 

I've been a little bummed since I had to move a lot of funds, lose our month ahead and deplete our EF, but hey...that's why all those funds are in place, right?  We're focused on getting all that built back up and it will take a while.  We just need to take it one paycheck at a time. 😉

One of our car loans slid below 1k this month!  Barely, but we only have two payments left plus one partial to finish up in September.  That's around the time when my husband's student loan payments will kick back in.  Unfortunately, this SUV is due for a trip to the shop due to a knocking engine...ugh.  But there is money in the Car Maintenance category, so let's hope the repair isn't too crazy.  My husband will look at it this weekend to see if it's something he can fix, but modern car engines are in such tight configurations, it might be something best left to the shop.  It's never a regular month, huh?  

Even typing this little blurb helped me see that we are making forward progress.  The important thing for me to understand is where we'd be if none of these funds to WAM from were around.  

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$978.98 - under 1k!

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$10776.03

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$30352.73

Gfamily46 Those are really big steps forward! Congrats!!

farfromtheusual Thank you!  One step forward at a time.  Just found out the car repair is going to be $800 (the bearings are shot in the water pump, so it definitely needs to be replaced), but we can swing with that.  We have $500 in auto maintenance and can WAM the rest from our household category.  We might have to delay our deck board replacement a little, which I honestly don't mind.  It's too freaking hot here to work on our deck in full sun, lol.  We did a total replacement of our front steps last summer and OMG, it was miserable!    

Gfamily46 That sounds like a win all the way!!!

July check-in time!  Somewhat uneventful month when it comes to unplanned stuff, but hey, I'll take it.  The most exciting thing is a stupid problem child molar that I need to get pulled later this week.  In the past two years, that molar has had a root canal, crown and apicoectomy when infection showed up last year.  But the infection is back, so it's time to pull that $2500 tooth out of my face.  And I'm probably looking at a dental implant after that (NOT cheap).  But we have a local teaching dental school, so I'm definitely going to make an appointment to see if they'll take me as a patient.  We can say bye-bye to any remaining money we have in our FSA, but that's why we contribute the full amount every year.  And we're still trying to recover from draining our EF and losing month-ahead status when we outright paid for our new heat pump in May.  Slowly but surely digging back out.  On another note, I've started researching travel hacking since we pay all our cards in full every month now.   We would like to travel after all this COVID mess, but there isn't a whole lot of money in the budget for that.   But it's a good time to learn and start working on points.

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$621.92 - two payments to go!! 😁

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$10,584.87

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$29,860.80 

Gfamily46 Ugh, my BF had a lot of major dental work, that's not fun. I hope you find an easy and economical solution!

farfromtheusual Thanks!  If the dental school takes me, I'm hoping that can save me 3k or more.  I hope your BF is all recovered now.  TBH, I have no worries about the pain, I just don't want it to mess up our budget goals! 😁

Gfamily46 I love that your budget goals are a higher priority than your pain!! 😂

A little late on the check-in, but August was a pretty good month.  Now that we're in September, I went ahead and just made the final payment on Car Loan 1...YESSS!!!  So I probably shouldn't count that in the August check-in, but I'm so excited to cross one more debt off the list.  We had a win with our house this month.  Back in April, there was a really bad hail storm and there has been a remodeling company recently canvasing the neighborhood offering to check for damage for free.  I hate solicitors, but this one was worthwhile.  Turns out we did have a lot of damage to our roof, gutters, downspouts, fascia and some window screens.  They're a reputable company and worked with our homeowner's insurance to get it covered and they accepted the estimate.  I was so happy that we were getting a new roof for the price of our deductible (and I created and funded a category for it), but it turns out we also have a vanishing deductible.  So NO money out of our pocket and a new roof and all the other stuff is on the way!  With 2020 being such a dumpster fire, it's nice to have a couple of wins.  We're continuing to work on building up our EF and getting a full month ahead.

Car Loan 1 - $3,025.55/$0!!!  Happy dance! 😁

Car Loan 2 - $11,691.27/$10,401.58

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 (0% interest through the end, so I'm not paying on these presently) 

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$29,389.86

Gfamily46 Wow! A whole new roof is awesome! That's great news!

Here we go for September.  It's really nice to see the progress as I look back on the year so far, almost 12k in principal eradicated.  Whew!  And the fact that an additional 3.5k has gone to interest (and that's without paying interest on school loans since March) is really eye-opening.  We're pretty much a month ahead now, so now it's time to start chipping away at debt again.  We started the year with a personal loan, school loan, two car loans and two credit cards.  Now we're down to the personal loan, school loan and one car loan. 😎

Car Loan - $11,691.27/$10,211.88 - Since we paid off the more expensive car loan last month (YEAH!!), I'm snowballing both that payment and what I would have paid on my husband's school loans here.  Since we only have three more months of no interest on the school loans, I'm not sure if putting less than $1000 to principal is really going to make that big of a dent in a $36k balance.  I'd rather see this car loan balance disappear a little more quickly.  

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 (not paying on these presently since they're 0% interest through December) 

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$28,881.24

Gfamily46 that's some serious progress!

Whoo boy, October was quite a whirlwind and it threw us for a huge loop.  My husband's workplace has been extremely toxic for a long time and honestly, it was breaking his spirit.  He was extremely overworked, way underpaid and completely unappreciated.  When he was asked to do some flat out illegal stuff, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and he quit early last month.  I've always told him that his mental health is worth a heck of a lot more than any salary.  Sooo, he's looking for a new job now and is doing a variety of gig work in the interim.  We were SO close to being budgeted a month ahead, but we have enough wiggle room for him to be picky with his next job.  Good thing we paid off one of the cars in August and there are no more before/after school care expenses for our son.  It will all fall into place eventually, it always does.  We did get our new roof last week and it looks great, especially since homeowner's insurance covered it all!  Here's hoping for a great new job for hubby and a financially uneventful November.  

Car Loan - $11,691.27/$10,026.89 

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 (not paying on these presently since they're 0% interest through December) 

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$28,376.77

Gfamily46 mental health is never worth sacrificing for a job. That's a tough decision to make, though. Glad he got out, and now he can move on to something bigger and better! Kudos to you for staying on track as much as possible, and congrats on the new roof!

farfromtheusual He finally saw that it just wasn't worth it anymore.  I could, and often did, tell him that until I was blue in the face, but his first priority has always been to take care of the family.   Unfortunately, that often obscured his view of the bigger picture.  But he's out, so onward and upward from here! 😉

Gfamily46 That's so great!!!

November check-in, but wow, I can't believe it's December already!  Where did the year go?  As per last month's wish, it was a pretty financially uneventful November.  And shockingly, we're now officially a month ahead!  I'm seriously not too sure how we pulled it off (I mean YNAB is how we pulled it off, duh 😋).  I did sell some stock to get us there and it helped give us our $1k emergency fund back and we already have our mortgage payment for January budgeted.  It's crazy!  No luck for my husband on finding a new job yet, but he has some pretty good handyman gigs that are paying decent.  For now, we have our heads well above water and things are pretty stress-free.  We'd be seriously floundering without YNAB.  We won't reach our stretch goal of 20k in principal payoff before the end of the year, but we're 65% of the way there and that's really good to see on paper.
 

Car Loan - $11,691.27/$9845.00 (doing the under 10k dance over here 💃)

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 (not paying on these presently since they're 0% interest through January) 

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$27,876.06

Gfamily46 🙌 💃🕺🎉 Dancing with you!

Last update of 2020!  What a year it has been.  I must say that YNAB has really saved our butts in 2020.  We easily weathered a heat pump failure and my husband quitting his job in October and somehow ended up a month ahead with a small EF (1k).  We paid off all credit cards and one vehicle and knocked out $13,709.72 (68.55% of my goal) in principal, but also paid almost $4.5k in interest...OUCH!!.  I'll definitely be joining the 2021 challenge.  Hopefully, my husband will have a solid job soon (he's been working gig jobs since October) and we can really start killing this debt!! 

Car Loan - $11,691.27/$9,655.51

School Loan - $37,532.77/$36,846.61 (no payments since March due to COVID)

Personal Loan - $33,190.77/$27,433.00

Happy New Year to you all! :)