This month went better than last month, we didn’t make as much progress on the debt as I would have liked, BUT it did go down which to me is the most important part. With Christmas and another round of sick kids, I feel like we were able to keep our heads above water and that feels good! So here are the numbers:
- Frugal house- $207,148
- Frugal Student Loans- $161,000
- Frugal Private Student Loan- $4,135
- Frugal Car 1- $14,800
- Frugal Car 2- $14,667
- Frugal Credit Card #1- $9,950
- Frugal Credit Card #2- $14,127
- Frugal Credit Card #3- $11,985
That’s $1,336 less than last month- we’re looking forward to a strong January since I’ll be getting reimbursed for some of our preschool costs. I’m shooting for 2k less. We have a medical bill for $300 that will need paying, but I have already built it into the budget.
Frugally speaking, we’ve done well that last week, clearing things out that we no longer need, organizing, and using up supplies. My son asked me for more pairs of pajama like pants- it’s been in the negative digits every night for the last week and everywhere I went they were sold out, so I made some! The kids were so excited and they were much much cheaper than what I would have found in the stores.
So here’s to a new year, our goal this year is to continue to attack the debt specifically, items 3-8, if we can make major progress in those areas, and just generally have another year in which we end up with less debt instead of more, we may be able to scale back a bit at our second jobs. We’ve had to do it a bit out of necessity but it would be nice to do it because we can and not feel like everything is going to come crashing down around us. We’ve paid off 15 thousand five hundred dollars ( I like writing that number out) in debt since we started this journey last year in February and that feels pretty good. I can’t even imagine what it will feel like when we’ve paid off another 15k (or hopefully more!!).
Keep up the good work! Reading your blog and a couple others keeps me going as well. My goal this year is to pay off a loan from my parents and to do better sticking to a budget. I am attempting to use the cash envelope system. I think I’ve figured out how to make it work for me and I hope that by sticking to it I will be able to save more and get my debt down quicker. I’ve also made a goal for myself to acquire $400 worth of gift cards from Swagbucks and other apps to use towards Christmas next year. It’s one of those “slow and steady wins the race” things. Good Luck!
Thank you! We’re working hard over here. It’s funny you mention swagbucks. I decided that this year all of our Christmas presents need to be homemade, yardsaled, or paid with via swagbucks/pinecone research. Have you tried pinecone? It’s pretty awesome.