Keep an expense journal

and threw older ones (before April 1st) into dustbin. This would be one small step for more organized people, but one giant reap for me! :)

I think I will start this back up again once we’re in a ‘normal’ pattern. Now that we have a sizable personal loan to work with, I am trying to come up with ways to use it to save us money down the line. I hope that I can get lots of milage out of it.

Just updating the life-changing total this time:

It is… drum roll please… $31,695.02

It’s a lot of money but it’s not so overwhelming because in the grand scheme of things, it’s attainable within a couple years’ time—or we could win a small fortune!

All I know is that I get big-time inspiration from seeing this number go down, and my saving’s account number go up—eventually the numbers will equal out, and we can pay off the loans, and be on cloud 9! That would be an EXTREMELY happy day!

I also want to prove that little things really do add up, and that no matter how hopeless a situation seems, there are always things you can do to improve your situation—therefore, there is always hope. Even if you have to nickel and dime it—you’re still closing the gap with every penny.

My goal for the next update is to be below $31,000. By then I would also like to be above $800 in savings.

As of 3/26/08:

Our new overall total is: $284,418.64
new ‘life changing total’: $32,221.32

[Life changing total consists of both credit cards, our credit union loan, and our car loan, and once these things are paid off… we would have about $860 more a month going into our checking account instead of toward these payments!]

So, much as I’d like to win a million dollars in the lottery- I really would be thrilled to win $35,000 as we’d feel rich to be able to get rid of those things once and for all, and then we could apply more money to our mortgages.

As of 1/29/08, the new total is:

$286,408.89

New ‘Life Changing Total’ is: $33,628.16

I found actual payoff amounts for the two items I estimated, and unfortunately our starting point is a bit higher than I originally thought…

Here’s the starting point:
$287,085.52

I am confident that we’ll be provided with the means to accomplish this! I look forward to my first progress report at the end of this month.

Here is the grand total that we would need right now to be free and clear of debts (give or take a few dollars):

$286,720.68

I want to see how much this decreases in a given month. It’s a lot, but if we sell our first house that would get rid of a lot of it and make us very happy! However, we have great tenants, so I would also be happy if they continued to rent from us when their lease is up for renewal in October. My reasonable and attainable goal for 2008 is to get that total under $275,000. Anything else would be icing on the cake!

deadline to make this a habit- 2/15/08

I’d like to streamline the process so I am likely to do this monthly.

For the month of December, I totalled our payoffs/principal balances in some cases for all of our debts. There were only two that I estimated because I didn’t have access to that information at the time. So, it’s a pretty close figure, and while it IS a lot of money, I think it will be encouraging to see that amount go down each time I tally it. It didn’t take long either, so I could theoretically do that monthly.

This is a two pronged goal:
1) I want to get an overall feel of our expenses throughout the year (which months are more costly, and which are easier) as well as our income (roughly) throughout the year

2) I want to have a ‘countdown’ of our overall debt that I can compile every couple of months or so, to see that it is, in fact, going down month by month. Hopefully, this will be encouraging.