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The Fast Five

June 29th, 2013 at 06:57 am

I have an app on my phone that lists my debts that are in order from how I entered them to highest interest rate to lowest balance, etc.

It also lists at the top how much I am putting total towards my debt. I have so much debt that if everything that I owed was due this month I wouldn't have enough to cover the minimums...

But fortunately for me most of my debt are student loans.

So I've decided to put in only five accounts. These are the five that I'm currently paying on (basically everything except for the majority of my student loans).

So the five that I have in the list are:

car loan
timeshare
WF student loan
apartment collections
medical collections
Sallie Mae

This app also compares all the different ways I could pay it off and gives me both the amount of total interest that I would pay and the month/year that it would be paid off at.

For instance, if I chose just the minimums then I'd pay $5,143.23 in interest and paid off by Nov 2047. Whereas if I chose highest interest rate first I'd pay $3,786.28 total interest but paid off by Apr 2018.

Right now I'm wanting to do a 5 year debt plan so this latter would actually fit better.

My minimum payments for these debts are $664 and I'm able to put as little as an extra $100 towards them for now and as much as $400.

This isn't including pay raises/promotions or even when I stop paying alimony. I'll adjust it accordingly but those adjustments won't just go directly to my debt payoff plan. They'll also go into my other savings category because I don't want to feel restricted with what I can and cannot do with my money.

My main objective is to pay off my debt within 5 years but to do it so that it's a workable plan. My first promotion will be sometime between August and November so I don't mind the restrictions that I currently have for two to five months. I still have "some" pocket money but I won't be really doing anything for a while.

Right now even looking at my budget, it has several wants that I'm glad that I can budget for such as Christmas and Birthday presents. In the past it's been about a $5 dollar budget for each person (twelve people). I'm ecstatic that I can increase it. Although it'll never go beyond $25 per person (I normally give the couples a gift card so that way they can put it towards whatever they want).

My plan states to pay it off in this order:

car loan
Sallie Mae
timeshare
WF student loan
apartment collections
medical collections

I won't start this until July because I'm still recovering and I just want to set everything up this month. And plus I'm still waiting for the timeshare people to lower my interest rate from 17% to 6%. They have my paperwork but I'm just waiting for it to be applied to my account.

My plan is to put almost $800/month towards debt (including minimums). Which means I'm NOT doing any other money challenges right now. That'll have to come next year at the earliest.

Keep in mind that my goal isn't to pay off the collections. They are at 0% interest and I don't mind giving them a few dollars for the rest of my life which goes directly towards principle.

My idea is that when I've paid off the non-collections, to start chipping away at the rest of my student loans. Maybe I can be completely debt free in four (4) years! Although my goal would be sooner than that!

2013 Money Saving Challenges

January 5th, 2013 at 03:28 am

I've been looking for some money challenges to do for this year. Something in order to help me save.

I happened to see Wealthy Warrior's challenge and have decided to participate. You can look at their challenge yourself if you'd like at http://beawealthywarrior.savingadvice.com/2013/01/02/52-week-money-challenge_99973/

Basically for the 52 week challenge, every week you put that amount of money in the bank. week 1 is $1, week 2 is $2, etc. I'll either do 52 weeks or break it up into two 26 week challenges.

Also I will do a money jar challenge. Whatever change that I have will go into the money jar to be tallied monthly. At the end of either the year or quarter, this money will be added to my savings account (I haven't decided yet).

I'm also going to do an Ebay challenge which would be to sell $500 by the end of the year.

I've heard about snowflakes. I think that is basically extra money that comes your way of doing extra things (not neccessarily a job but extra monies that are earned). So I will do a $250 Snowflake Challenge.

If any of you can think of any other suggestions for money saving challenges, just drop a line.

So far for 2013 my saving money challenges are:

52 (or 26) Week Challenge
Money Jar Challenge
$500 Ebay Challenge
$250 Snowflake Challenge