Debt is a funny thing, isn’t it? We’ve been told all of our lives that there’s good debt and bad debt. Is there such a thing though as good debt and bad debt? I’ll let you decide that for yourselves.
I started this blog as a way to keep myself accountable of my own debt journey and hopefully be able to inspire others to do the same.
I want to start out by saying that I’ve always been fairly good with my money. I always paid my bills on time (and still do) and I never carried a balance on my credit card. Once I bought my house and unexpected things like large expenses and a pregnancy happened, I just let it all go. Looking back, I realize how awful of a mistake it was but all I can do is move forward.
I may not have a crazy, insane amount of debt but it’s still quite sizable to me and my goal is to squash it! Well, at least some of it. What I consider to be the worst out of my debts. As hard as it is, I rounded up my numbers. I’m excluding my house for now because we do not plan on staying there forever. Our dream is to buy land and build our own house (another motivating reason to smash debt to pieces).
Medical bill #1: $1000.54
Medical bill #2: $199.00
Student Loans: $28,917.15
Credit Card #1: $2589.00
Credit Card #2: $985.00
Personal Loan: $3944.00
The minimum payments for all of those bills combined comes to about $900.00 per month. PER MONTH. Let’s take a moment and think about all of the things that money could go towards. Something way better than debt, right?
I could sit here and stay mad at myself, or I could try to figure out a way to pay off my debt. I’m going to go with option B. It’s time to buckle down and tell my money where to go instead of the other way around.
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Things I’m working on to lower our expenses:
Lower my grocery bill
Groceries are always a big part of our budget but I am trying to keep it under $400.00 per month. I was doing great last month until I kept forgetting things and forgot to budget our monthly trip to Sam’s. Planning out my meals is really helping our budget because it doesn’t leave any room for surprises.
Lower personal expenses
In my earlier years, I employed a $20 per week personal allowance and I stuck to it. That included eating out and whatever extra personal things I wanted that didn’t fit in the grocery budget. I am going back to this policy to see how much I can save.
Lower eating out bill
Eating out…..this one just kills my budget. Whenever we don’t feel like cooking or we have poor time management skills, we go out to eat. I don’t mind every once in a while but it’s easy and an absolute budget killer to do it two or three times per week. Not to mention that I have a Panera Bread that DELIVERS right down the road from my work. So, my goal is to bring my lunch 9 out of 10 work days every pay period and to meal plan for every dinner so we aren’t scrambling at the last second to find something to eat.
Switch to automatic payment for lower interest rate
For my student loans, there was always an option to set up automatic payments and receive a 0.25% rate reduction. I like to pay a little extra each month and for some reason, I thought this wasn’t possible with automatic withdrawal. How wrong I was. It may not seem like much, but I am going to save every penny I can in an effort to pay my loans off.
Do you have any tips on paying off debt? I would love your comments and insight!