No more swimming pools, from now on, we live like we got nothing!
JP and I had a quick conversation tonight before he left for his ballgames.
We made a plan, and I fixed the budget to accommodate our new plan. It will include saving in several forms. One saving for the trip to England, one savings just because we have so many plans that we cannot afford to do within one paycheck. Of course we will not go hog wild on the savings until certain things are paid off.
My first 'target' is our Menards credit card. Thanks to JP having Guard camp in the beginning of August, that will be gone by mid to late August. He will get his regular City paycheck AND a Guard check. The $200 that we had been sending to Menards will be lumped with the $100 that was already going to the Target card. That will then become my second 'target'. Everything else will receive the minimum payment amount rounded up only slightly. Once Target is gone, I will hit the AAFES card, which is the military credit card.
Not only is this plan killing the ones with the lowest balances first, but also the ones with the highest interest rates first. It just works out nice that way. Quick results, kicking the lowest balances, but also getting rid of the high interest rates right away.
And of course, in December, I will have to start paying back my student loans. Luckily, that total is not nearly as high as it could be, and with student loan rates being so low, it won't take much rounding up to make pretty short work of it.
JP and I just have to try very hard and watch each other and ourselves to keep on track.
In the greater plan, once the credit cards are gone, I would like to pay off JP's truck early. As long as our savings can be built as we go, we should never have 'need' of credit again. There are several things we want to do, remodeling and such. If we save as we pay things off, hopefully we can use that for the projects in the future instead of going in to debt again.
This is a post I will need to come back to, visit often, to keep myself on track...
2 comments:
Good for you. I recently transferred a credit card balance and used the Discover Card plan to pay off my credit card in 26 equal payments. Hopefully after that I won't have any credit card debt!! Good luck...
oh gawd dont talk about money and saving, it is the summer time no need to bring up downers. But in all you are right, I need to step up my own money tracking....I am such a spend-thrift!
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