pay off all my debts

i can tolerate it being pushed back a month or two, but not much more than that. i feel like we’ve been doing fairly well, staying on track, more or less, with the payment plan. the real problem is that even when i send hundreds of dollars to the credit cards each month, we still end up overspending elsewhere, which requires us to then pay off the overdraft, which means we end up using the credit cards when we’re short on cash…it’s a vicious cycle.

but i’m keeping my eyes on the prize. i transferred one cc balance to an existing account that sent me a special offer of 3.00% through February 2007. while i wanted to have the thing paid off by the end of the year, i could tolerate February. the other card has 0% through May 2007. i’m paying the minimum toward this one in the meantime, which aren’t small ~$150.00/month. as long as there is enough cash come May 2007 to start seriously chipping away at this, we can do it. there will be some minor setbacks, including our trip to San Diego at the end of this month and plans to go to Niagara in October for our anniversary, but i’m confident that we’ll be out of this hole before too much longer.

i just paid off my car loan!!!!!!! wheee!!!! and the dining room table!!!! yyaaayyyy!!!1

i’m happy :) can you tell? ;)

my car and the dining room are paid off at the end of the month! wheee! this is going to free up some much-needed cash. i can’t wait to start socking some of it away into the vacation and house-down-payment funds. finally!!

hubby’s student loan is down below $100 – less than the regular monthly payment – which means we can kiss this goodbye next month. whoo-hoo! then, come july, it’ll be bye-bye dining set and black car loan. yay! it will be so nice to start saving the money that ordinarily goes to those bills instead of sending it to someone we owe money to. granted, the credit card situation hasn’t improved since we went on vacation last week, but we’ll get there.

whoo-hoo-hoo! my balance went from almost $2k to less than $600 just like that. knock on wood, fingers crossed, etc., that nothing bad happens to black car. man, to think, i’m going to have it paid off in 2 & 1/2 months instead of 8. i am thrilled. oh, and as an added bonus, i was back at the tent today to get the check for my husband’s car, and i overheard one of the insurance guys talking to a customer and he said that a lot of times, the sun will work out some of the dents. the sun will work out of some of the dents?! “especially on black cars.” shoot, my car is black! i will be very interested to see if that is actually true or not. let’s have some sunny days and find out!

so we had these crazy hailstorms here two weekends ago and thanks to the speediness of my insurance company (go erie!) i have a check in my hot little hand that is going to make its way to the bank and go straight to the auto loan. i am giddy. the car is going to be paid off five months sooner than originally planned. sure, i have to drive around in a car that looks kinda beat up, but i don’t really care. knock on wood, the car is going to be paid off ahead of schedule, and god willing, will still last me another 3 years or to 200k miles, whichever is later. yay!!

this is when we are tentatively planning on traveling to norway with the fam, and i want to be free and clear of all credit card debt by the time we do. i think having a specific end date in mind will really help us accomplish this. we’ve talked about getting stuff paid off before, but never with a due date in mind, always with the mindset, ‘we could get it done in X months,’ etc. well, there we have it. 16 months and counting.. we can do this.

whoo-hoo! another one paid off!! and the student loans only have one and a half payments left! soon after, the dining room set will be paid off, too. gotta keep tackling and staying on track to wipe out the credit cards, but every installment loan that gets paid off, the more there is to go to the visas. yay!

i was at a collections law seminar today (which was really, really good, btw) and the instructor mentioned a book called “money mastery” by peter jeppson and alan williams et al. having just read an excerpt from the book on amazon.com, i think this is a book that is definitely going to resonate with me. i hope that it will have some money saving and debt reduction tips that i don’t know yet and/or that are easier to put into practice than what i’m trying to do now.

macy’s = 0. best buy has only one more payment on it. and in spite of the fact that i just got wholloped with a couple of major bills in the last week or so, i feel good to have these things dropping off the list. even though they were relatively small amounts to begin with, there is still a feeling of relief and of satisfaction not to have to write one more check each month.