Debt Update

Those of you who followed me on my old blog or who know me personally know we’ve been working on getting out of debt.  We took Financial Peace University in the fall of 2013 and started the process.  

We had hoped to get it all paid off within a year but it’s taken a longer than we’d hoped.  We hit several financial bumps along the way and had to pay for lots of unexpected things.  When we moved in May we pretty much stalled out due to the significantly higher cost of living here. We haven’t really made any progress since May but are finally at the point where we are able to start rolling again!

…

and then we bought a car…

This is our new debt payoff chart.  Look how close we are on the original debt we paid off!  (We would have paid it off at the end of 2017 had we just made the minimum payments)

We’ve been driving a ’97 Ford Explorer which we love but it guzzles gas and the electric windows stopped working, and so did the A/C… and the heat likes to not work and so does the electric seat adjustment… 

So we bought a Prius which technically triples our debt… however, the money we should save on gas is less than the cost of the car payments!    She’s beautiful and red and we LOVE her.  It’s the first car we’ve ever bought and we’re thrilled with the choice.  However, signing the papers and seeing the new debt was scary. 

Hubby got a promotion and I have found a small weekly paid blogging gig so we should be able to pay off our original debt by summer and the car within a year to 18 months.  We just have to stay on track and not spend unnecessary money!

Please help motivate us to stay on track because most days we’d really rather go out to eat than think about our debt…