2nd Debt Paid off!!!

This is the end of our eighth month on the Dave Ramsey's Total money makeover plan. And Today we have just paid off our 2nd Debt. We started with a total of five different Debts Ranging from $7,341 to $13,548 (not counting our house), totaling $49,705.46. Today our debt total is nearly $30,400. Which means we have paid off about $19,300 since we started. We are getting so close to the halfway mark.

Luckily we have been working extra hours and it has been helping speed the process along. We seem to be a couple months ahead of schedule. I hope we can keep up this pace.

This month we paid an extra $1690.13 on our debt.

What won't you sacrifice?

I was listening to Dave Ramsay's Podcast this morning from a couple days ago. One thing he said got me thinking. It was a statement about reaching goals. It kinda went something like this.... most people think about "what can I do", or "what can I sacrifice" to reach a goal. And that these things are the Key to reaching your goal. But the thing that will keep you from reaching your goal is The things your NOT willing to give up or sacrifice. Cause those things are the opposing forces that make goals harder to reach or work against it.

This got me thinking. And I thought of this scenario.

So if a person is willing to work more to pay off debt, pick up an extra job. He is willing to sacrifice time with his family to reach this goal. But what if, to answer the other question of "what will the person NOT sacrifice?" is keeping a new vehicle and the payment instead of selling it off. This is the opposing force keeping you from you goal.

Also, in this scenario what is more important to the person, time with family or the new vehicle. It would seem the new vehicle once you step back and look at it.

So what about my goal?

What is the opposing forces to my goal of getting out of debt? What are these things that I won't give up that are keeping me from reaching my debt free goal, or slowing it down?

1. Not completely stopping our home improvement project.

2. Not selling our camper which is our largest single debt.

3. Not stopping contributions to my 401k.

4. Not stopping saving money for vacation fund.

These things I won't give up. At least right now. We are still on track to pay off all our debt in two years or less. If something changes, we will have to consider doing these things to keep us on track. And after looking at these things, I realize they do represent are good portion of our monthly budget. And if we did all these things we could be out of debt much faster.

So ask yourself, "What am I NOT willing to give up?"

My wife is now insured.

My wife works part time as an RN at a community hospital. For us it seems to work well because, the pay is good and she picks which days she wants to work. She doesn't get any benefits though. No 403B or pension plan. No health, dental, disability or life insurance. We had health and dental on my wife, through my plan at work, but only a $30,000 life insurance through my work's plan. That might be enough to bury her.

We've known for a while we needed to get some term life insurance on her. So I decided to try out Select quote online. The process took way longer than I would have suspected.

First we filled out a questionnaire online that took about 15 minutes. The next day a sales representative calls us and asked the same questions again. Then he set up an appointment for a person to come to our house and take blood, and do a medical exam. We had to wait a couple weeks for the person come to examine my wife. We had a little trouble finding a day when both of their schedules were free. Then it took a couple weeks after that for the blood results and for the insurance company to finalize the paperwork.

The total process took about a month long. Finally when we saw the money deducted from our checking account we knew she was insured. We got $500,000 of term life insurance for the next twenty years for $19.69 a month.

We've been putting this off for a while. Glad to get it done.

It kinda feels like of Financial peace.

As we have been going down the road to financial peace. We have been slowly increasing the amount of money in our normal checking account. Most of our bills come at the beginning of the month, we only have a couple that are toward the end. So when the month starts we need a lot of money to throw at bills. A couple months ago we got our account to where it starts the beginning of the month with $2,000.

This month we still haven't got paid yet, but all our bills are paid. We built the account up so we would have enough to pay most of the bills we have in a month. It is such a wonderful feeling, to pay the bills and know we have the money to pay them. We don't have to worry about, what weeks we get paid, and paying just a few bills, and waiting for the next paycheck to pay more bills. We start out the month and pay all the bills we can find. This is my mind is like having financial peace. Not having to worry having the money for the bills. Maybe it like having a larger emergency fund. Whatever you want to call it, it gives me a little less to worry about.

Also and the end of the month, whatever we have in our account over $2,000, we pay extra on debt. Our system is working out pretty good.

A six paycheck month

My wife and I get paid every two weeks on the same weeks. July was one of those magic months where we each got 3 paychecks. So we had extra money to play with in our budget last month. We used some of the extra money to replace my wife's vacuum and to buy a new back door for the house. The rest we paid on debt.

Also the weeks I wasn't on vacation I was working lots of extra hours. The overtime is coming every week now. Earlier in the year it was harder to get extra hours. Now it seems like I can work extra everyday. So the paychecks I got were bigger than usual. So July being a six paycheck month, really helped us work toward our debt free goal.

So when July was done. We paid an extra $2,288.50 on our debt.

Vacations - and we paid cash for them

We took two vacation this month. First the Wife and I took a trip alone for our 5 year anniversary. We drove out west to see the sights. We went to 3 national parks and to Las Vegas.

Ways we saved money on our first trip was.

We brought food and drinks in a cooler. We ate this food the while driving and while we were in the national parks to eat. This really cut down on the eating out. We also used in the motel rooms to grab a snack or eat. We used air miles to pay for hotel stays. The national parks were only $10 to $25 to get into. We spent about 6 to 8 eight hours in each park. (Arches, Canyon lands, and Grand canyon nation parks.) In Las Vegas we got discount tickets on the strip at vendors to a few things. We used our blow money we had saved for most of our expenses. We used the vacation money to fund the gas.

Our second vacation was a short trip with the kids. We took the camper and stayed at a campground near a theme park. We took one day to go to the theme park and play all day. The great thing about camping is we just load food from our house and we don't eat out a lot. Which makes it cheaper.

Both vacations we paid for in cash. We had been saving money every month for vacation. Overall a success.