OK, it's been a while. Sorry.
My current focus is building our savings and getting out of debt. This is going to take a while, but I'm sure it is possible.
I have set up a weekly automatic transfer from my checking to my savings and honestly don't even notice that it's gone. I'm not up to 10% yet but little by little our savings account is growing. I have also been dumping any unexpected cash flow in there as well. We just got our $25 City return (WOO-HOO!), a small refund from the cable company we just left, etc. Still not much, but it does add up.
I have decided to go against my previous advice and stop upping the percentage going into the savings at 5% instead of 10%. Instead, I will start putting the added percentages toward our debt until we can get rid of it. We recently used our tax return to pay off our car loan. This wasn't our biggest or smallest loan and it didn't have the most interest, but it was our biggest payment and just about the amount of our return. It just made sense to get rid of it and free up a little cash every month.
Now, in theory, you would think we would be able to transfer that monthly payment that we no longer have to make to another loan with no interruption but the fact of the matter is that with the economy the way it is and gas at $4/gallon and a son in college 7 hours away, and the price of everything going up much faster than our wages... that just aint gonna happen. BUT... it did free up the cash flow to make saving at all possible. Now on to the next bill. This time we're starting with the smallest total. This is a credit card with a 0% introductory rate for the first 12 months. I think we're a little over 1/2 way through that time period.
I have found that it's hard to pay $400 a month toward anything that doesn't require it, but I can manage to pay $100 weekly. Doesn't make much sense I know, but it's how my brain works. I use online bill pay and will start transferring the additional 1% that my savings was going to grow each month to the loan instead. I will keep the 5% going in to savings at least until that gets built up to a good emergency fund level. Also, any of the "extra" checks, refunds, rebates, etc. will be transferred weekly to the loan. Hopefully, we'll be able to pay it off before we have to start paying interest. This one's going to be tough,. I'll let you know how it goes.
As much as we wanted to keep ourselves out of this predicament, we just can't deny that we need to have some. We can buy everything through cash – house, properties, cars, etc. But it would take a long time before we can make it because of so many expenses.
ReplyDeleteJaden Allred