It's that time again... Time to confess to the world what my family's current debt situation looks like. As you may recall from my posts in August, and September, we have the following debts, and our ultimate goal is to be debt free. Our first step in doing so is to pay off the debts in Group A, which will then allow us to work on an early pay off of the remaining debt in Group B (our mortgage).
Group A:
A Student Loan (Natural maturity of March 1, 2015)
Credit Card 1
Credit Card 2
Home Equity Loan (Natural maturity of June 1, 2017)
Car loan (Natural maturity of May 15, 2016)
Group B:
Mortgage (Natural maturity of July 1, 2039)
Unfortunately, I missed posting our progress as of October 1, 2013, but I was a little stressed out when I woke up that morning only to find myself on furlough due to the Federal Government Shutdown.
So, how did we do at reducing our debts in Group A in September and October? Honestly, we didn't do very well at all. I'm quite dismayed comparing November 1st's figures to that of September 1st. I was hoping to have made greater strides at this point.
In August our total debt owed for the accounts in Group A totalled ($24,531.17).
The value of the debts in Group A, as of September 1, 2013 was ($23,557.45)
The value of the debts in Group A, as of November 1, 2013 is ($23,467.43)
We paid down our debts by a severely deficient amount of $90.02 in the past two months. While it is forward progress, it's not nearly as much of a change as I would have like to have seen.
In reviewing our accounts I can see that there were a couple of things that played into the small reduction in our debts over the past two months. In September we took a small family vacation, and that reduced the amount of funds we had that month to put towards or debts. The memories that we made with our children during that weekend out of state are far worth the monetary expense though. October brought forth the furlough, which caused a pinch in our budget prior to being reimbursed for the time that was missed at work. I was fortunate in the fact that we were reimbursed, and it had no affect on the payment of our bills. In October we did a small home improvement project that involved resurfacing our deck, again this reduced the amount of funds we had available to pay down debts; however, it preserved our deck and will hopefully prevent us from having to replace the deck in the next few years.
I'm already anticipating that December and January will have little progress as we head into the holiday season and requisite shopping/gift exchanges.
