A debt breakthrough with a little help from the tax man!

I'm about neck deep in paper writing right now but I had to stop for a second because I am bursting with excitement to announce that we've had a break through. Our partial tax return coupled with a few regular debt payments was just the little boost that was needed to put some wind back into our debt paying sails. We're down another $2,257.

Leaves $56,000 my friends which means that since October, we've paid off about $8,000. 

By the April update we'll have our family loan 100% paid off and will be onto tackling the credit cards with some pretty big force. As I mentioned before, we're big fans of the snowball method of debt repayment. With our family loan paid off, we'll have extra money in addition to the money we're already paying on the credit cards. 

Side note: Twice this weekend the evil bank tried to squash our debt paying efforts. 

First, when I went into the bank to make a deposit into our bank account, the teller was insistent about letting me know that I was eligible for a no-fee reward credit card due to the certain type of account we hold and the fact that DH holds one that that institution. I respectfully declined (go me). The teller was flabbergasted. Couldn't understand why I wouldn't want a NO-FEE REWARDS CREDIT CARD to which I replied that we were trying to pay off our existing credit cards rather than taking more on. 

Secondly, we had gotten overdraft on our bank account awhile back thinking that we could exercise some control and use it as our emergency cushion. Turns out we couldn't (as we've learned from the past - but sometimes some of us humans have to make the same mistakes over again a few times to learn). "Emergencies" are really just to easy to justify and there is always the excuse of paying it back next week which never really happens and before we know it we've used up all the OD. For us, overdraft always leads to us operating as if the overdraft limit is the $0 rather than the actual $0.   

Yesterday DH called to cancel overdraft on our joint bank account. When the bank asked why, he had no trouble explaining the above to the customer service rep. Once she had taken care of removing it, she slyly asked if he was aware that he had a few 0% interest for 6 months balance transfers available for him for his credit card (which is currently maxed out might I add). So if we were to take her up on the offer, we'd be right back at square one. He declined and got the hell off the phone!