Month 3 was slightly more challenging in terms of debt repayment. With Christmas last month and the holidays, we've spent a lot of January playing catch up as we collectively missed out on about $1700 during our time off since of course we both don't make money if we don't go to work. Thankfully, I do get statutory holiday pay. We also decided awhile back to stop putting away money for savings until we have the debt all paid off since we could be saving money in interest by applying that money instead to debt and then dipping into credit when we absolutely needed to. Three months into our project to wipe out $64,000 of debt before DH and I reach our 30th birthdays and...
We're down $74.00 from last month which brings us to:
$59,786
I was thinking about delaying this post until next week when a couple more debt payments will have gone out so it didn't look like so little progress but in the end, I guess we can be happy that we did achieve some progress no matter how minimal. Another reason why this amount was so low was that the opportunity arose for us to purchase a new vehicle to replace the VERY unreliable vehicle I have been driving. Consequently, we had a few additional expenses that went along with that. Having a reliable vehicle is important and I'm optimistic that we'll save a lot of money on gas with our new to us 2009 Prius! We did take out a loan for this car but it will not affect our debt repayment as we have enough cushion money in our budget to cover the payments without trimming down our debt repayment.
6 comments:
Oh my gosh, I am SO happy for you! I love love love my Prius and I know just how wonderful it feels to be driving one after driving an unreliable car. Enjoy every energy efficient mile!
Thanks!!! I'm loving it so far! The two boys fit nicely in the back with no problems too.
My massive SUV certainly doesn't help when we are trying to pay down the debt:) It guzzles gas- I didn't realize how much until I started driving it into Scarborough a few times a month for work.
So, you're not putting any money into RRSPs until the debt is gone? That's an interesting idea...I've been thing inking of stopping our automatic contributions as well because we're still young enough to make it up later on. The only thing we would miss is the tax break...
Sarah, we stopped our Tax Free Savings Account contributions because it doesn't make sense for us to be saving money while we're paying interest on our outstanding debt. We do have RESPs for the boys which we do pay but we don't make any contributions into RRSPs. DH has a very good pension which he contributes to through work. I don't have anything currently but we still have lots of time. I'm not too worried. Trying to look at debt as an emergency. If we can wipe out this debt in the next 3 years even (which is looking totally do-able) than we can start putting the maximum amounts into RRSPs.
So, you got me thinking and this weekend we cashed in our RRSP money and are by and large consumer debt free! No joke!!!! We have our mortgage still- and I have a very small student loan through the government that I could pay off in a month or two. Mostly I credit you with even putting the thought in my head to stop making payments into our RRSP (we're young enough that we can easily make up the contribution amount down the road). Thanks Kristy!!
Oh my goodness! That's AMAZING! So proud of you!!! I can't even imagine what that feels like but hopefully I'll know before too long :)
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