It’s been awhile since I’ve done a debt payoff check-in. Part of that reason is because I don’t feel like I have much to tell you. While we have been paying down some debt, we have also taken out a car loan. Back in December 2014 we discovered that to repair Matt’s little two door Focus was going to cost us almost twice what the car itself was worth. And that was just to get it to pass inspection. As it was a 2002 and a cheaply build car, that $2000 wasn’t going to last long before more repairs we needed. So we decided to purchase a new to us car the end of February. It’s still not a truck but going from a little, tiny car to a compact SUV has made a big difference for Matt and what he likes to do for work and fun. It’s so much easier for him to put chainsaw and other tree gear in it and the gas mileage didn’t change too much.
So in the spirit of “keeping it real,” here is where we currently are with our debt payoff.
$43,336.84
$31,159.27
Current numbers:
$32,656.86
Analysis: Yup. It’s gone up not down since the last check-in. The car loan is what did it. However, the thing that does make me happy about this number is that only $2,000ish is the car. We were able to have a fairly large down payment for the car. Our total payoff number only went up $1,497.59 since my last check-in.
Sometimes in your debt payoff you will go backwards. If we had more income, we would have been able to pay cash for Matt’s new car. Since we don’t, we didn’t really have a choice. It made no sense to sink so much money into a car that was dying a quick (and expensive) death. I have nothing against Focuses. We’ve owned two. But they aren’t really intended to be a long lasting car. They are a good, cheap commuter car, but they don’t last a long time. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but buying that Focus in fall of 2011 was not the frugal decision we thought it would be.
What we are doing: I am continuing to pay extra on my student loan that is down to about $1,000. I pay about $25-30 extra each month. That’s it. That is all we are able to do at this point in time. The particular work Matt is doing right now, while he enjoys it, doesn’t come with the bonus that what he used to do it (same company, position, and job just different type of work). That has made it much more difficult on me to save money, pay extra on the loans, etc.
Yearly goal: By August 2016 I’d like to have my $1,000ish student loan paid off and I would like to be starting in on Matt’s smallest which is about $1,675.
Are you working to pay off your debt? How is it going?
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