Debt Update

We started this journey in September 2010. As of July 1st, 2011, we have paid off $13864.01!!!!!

As you may have heard, Tony and I are working super hard to pay off our debt. We have made a few mistakes in the past that we can blame on being young and naive... or most likely we were just being stupid and careless! However, after taking a long 13-week course about money management, we are on the same page. A page that says NO to debt! A page that is sick of giving over $1000/month of our hard earned income away to the collectors! A page that no longer wants to be slave to the lender!

Here is the ugly, nasty truth of how out of hand our debt became:

So almost a year ago, on September 13th, we walked into our first Financial Peace University class. We had heard about it through our marriage prep class and knew that the first class was a freebie. Everyone else in the class already had the kit and workbooks ready to go. Tony and I sat empty-handed. He was embarassed, but I didn't want to "blow" $100 on something we weren't going to stick to. I even forgot to print out the workbook freebie handout, which furthered Tony's embarassment. I had forgotten that sometimes he doesn't like to "go with the flow" and stick out from the others. Needless to say, after one class, we were hooked. We bought the kit from our instructor before walking out the door that night.

I quickly dove in and became the nerd of the Stein team. Tony fell into the roll of the free spirit, but started to grow more into a tight-wad free spirit ;) Fortunately we already had Baby Step 1: $1000 Baby Emergency Fund in place from our wedding. After three weeks of class, I finally calculated our Debt Snowball. Ouch. Our total debt was... get ready for this... take a seat.... $61,943.19. We were 25 years old. How the hell did this happen?! It was time to get angry and get rolling on our debt snowball.

If we can keep up the same pace of about $1500/month, we will be debt free by June 30th, 2014. Although this seems super far away at this point, I have to remember what we started with (see that sickening number above) and how much on interest we will be saving (over $11,000!). Plus, it's seven years earlier than if we just paid minimum payments!

We are finally under the $50,000 mark. Do you know how much debt you have? Most recent grads/mid-20s have never added it up. You can't attack a problem if you don't even know where you stand. I challenge you to the Debt Snowball!!!