work on my snowball with "gazelle intensity"

With the wedding, I have totally fallen off the wagon on this one. And after the honeymoon, I can’t see past getting a fence . . . maybe I need to suffer through another winter without one. It would be $2500, and we could use that to pay off one whole student loan and a good chunk of another one. I am torn about this because we probably could knock out the money to have the fence by September and the move ahead with the plan. Or I could pay the small loan and then take another detour. But detours are not what this plan is about!!!!!

We need to make a list of all the purchases we want to make and prioritize it. It seems like idea after another just keeps cropping up: couch, roof (?!), car?, etc. etc.

Bah.

On the bright side, we will not incur any debt to do our wedding.

ETA: I never did make an entry here about paying off my car. That was a good thing and has helped us have more money for the wedding.

Just got back from Hawaii and am doing a re-analysis of where I’m at. I paid for all of Hawaii trip in cash, yippee! We have some money in our wedding fund, more than half, and I am making contributions to our honeymoon fund with the money I formerly paid for rent (b4 I moved in with dear fiance). So that is pretty well on track.

Now, for the momentous part . . . I have started the ball rolling to make additional online payments to my car loan. This is the part it’s taken me ten months to get to – to where my snowflakes can go exclusively to my debt. It feels scary, because we haven’t done the wedding yet, so what if we come up short?! But we have a nice little start on the savings and I figure if we over-pad the wedding account we will find something to spend it on, which isn’t what we want to do. So I am going to take the risk, knowing that if I need to later, I will divert funds to this part of the snowflake back to the wedding fund. Feels great!!

I have been focusing on getting my snowflakes into my wedding fund, and it’s worked well (especially since it’s tax season . . .) I have put in my pre-agreed amount into our fund (and then some!). After Hawaii I will start putting money in the honeymoon fund, and once I have enough there, I will move on to my debt! I think this could happen even before the wedding. Goody! I may, even though it’s not in keeping with the snowball, even split my contributions between honeymoon fund and debt, because part of the money is what I used to pay in rent and what I’m not contributing to the household, so that can go for the honeymoon as “our” money, and then the rest can go to debt like I was doing before.

I thought it would be July before I could move on to killing the debt and so far, we are on budget for the wedding and have the actual cash in hand much earlier than anticipated.

goal and reignite the intensity part. I upped the auto transfers when I got my raise in September but I don’t think I’ve actually let the full amount get transferred once – meaning I keep going in and editing for one reason or another. A wedding and honeymoon need paying for in the next five months, and then on to debt land.

I think one area where we’re overspending is food. It’s harder to do it with another person – I mean control the spending. I don’t want to be the penny pincher while he’s willing to buy nice food, for example. Because if the nice food’s there, I’m going to eat it, and I should pay my part. But when it was my turn to order groceries/go to the grocery store last week, I did take a good look at what was already on hand and only bought enough to complete some meals. That saved a little bit.

Woo hoo, got $30 more toward my snowball.

I was all set to start kicking my debt but now I need to start a wedding fund!! I guess that’s a good thing! And I’m happy to have the resources to do so.

It is interesting how if you start to focus on a different goal, the ones you were previously focused on suffer. I started to think and act more on my fitness goals and have consequently let this one slip. I did have a little breakdown and bought some clothes this month because I was getting low and having no luck at the thrift store. But now that my wardrobe is back into the acceptable range as far as number of garments (as opposed to crisis mode before), I can reestablish my intensity again.

On a very good note, I am engaged! As far as money and my gazelle intensity, the limbo of not knowing how to pay for the wedding – or rather, what the plan is, because we will be able to come up with the money – is stressing me out a little. Should I be diverting money from my debt repayment? Simply using my rent money, once it is no longer used for rent, toward the wedding? Are we going to establish a joint savings account for wedding expenses? Or do it like we’ve done with our trips, one pays for some stuff and one pays for other stuff and we even up at the end? I want to decide these things so I can make adjustments in my own plans. I know nothing is a right or wrong answer, we just have to decide. Plus we need to start putting aside money now.

I used my favorite calculator for snowball analysis and at the amount I plan to dedicate to the attack (after polishing off Hawaii fund), it will take an anticipated 16 months to repayment of my $19,000 remaining dollars of debt. And that’s not including snowflakes – especially the biggies like tax refund, or the refund of these deposits I’ve put down for Hawaii, or some other medium-sized flakes that I’m expecting throughout the spring. WOOOO HOOOO!!

My BF and I love to travel, and we’re pretty good at doing trips on a budget, I think. This year we’re already going to Hawaii, and my debt repayment is a top money priority (he doesn’t have any). So I reminded us of our idea to do a South Dakota trip the other day . . . silly me. And he remarks “Maybe this summer.” And I say, “But I really want to stay focused on my debt.” And he responds, “You only live once.” I know! I know! Not traveling is like not eating! But I’ve put off paying off this debt for what will be at least three big trips now. And I’m very glad I had all of those experiences, but the debt remains a weight, and keeps me from really reaching for the big journeys we would like to take . . . Britain – Sweden – all of Canada – Alaska – many more! I don’t think SD will come up again anytime soon, but if it does, I must remain strong. Now a Boundary Waters trip or some other camping-in-Minnesota trip I can handle. We can calm our travel desires on a microbudget that way . . . but I just don’t know about anything out of state until the debt is gone . . . what a day that will be!

I was noticing when I just posted my chart photo that I never marked my car pmt for November. So I did that, and realized that my car balance is only $500 more than my smallest student loan balance. So what I think I’m going to do, even though it isn’t technically the smallest of my loans, is to start rolling the snowball toward my car instead of toward my student loan. That’s because my car payment is $317, and my student loan payment is only $150. I figure if I can free up an extra $317 for the student loans, that’s better than freeing up an extra $150 for the car. Good news!!

I already wrote all about the developments in my chart but never posted a photo. I have satisfied my tuition savings goal (far left column), am closing in on my Hawaii goal (second from left) (if all goes as planned, will be satisfied in a month) and am ready to KICK ASS on my loans. YES!!!!!