2016 Debt Free Progress: March

Last year, I had set a goal to pay off $23,000 in debt. It was our second year as home owners, and the first year that we were getting creative with our debt payments, and going above and beyond the minimum payment. It was also the most we would have paid off in a single year. I’m happy to report that last year we paid off $27,035.16 in debt! That was more than half of Hubs’ income at the time!

So for 2016, I upped the ante a bit. I want to aim for $24,000 in debt. It’s a little less than what we paid overall last year, but there’s an even bigger goal that’s attached to it: 1} terminate our lease on Bookworm’s trumpet, I tackled this at the end of January, 2} own our car outright, 3} pay off my small student loan, and 4} pay off my credit card. These are the last 4 debts we have before we hit what I call our “Big 3”: the house, and our major student loans.

So how did we do in our debt free progress for March?

Mortgage: $500.00

Student Loans: $316.27
This month I paid off the remaining balance on my small student loan. I had been checking the site for the payoff amount at the end of last month, but didn’t want to start a habit of borrowing from money that’s not there, so I waited until the beginning of this month to pay it off. The payoff amount only had a good through date of the 11th, and the due date was the 14th. Rather than accrue another few dollars in interest, I paid the loan off a little early.

Credit Card 2: $210.00

Car Payment: $790.14
The car payment this month was a little lower than I was hoping for because we had to put a little more money towards our first credit card than I had anticipated. At the end of last month, Hubs’ credit card had two fraudulent charges on it, totalling a little over $1,200. To the idiots out there who did that, how are we not going to notice that? In the process of getting that account number closed and transferring all of our reoccurring charges {Netflix, weekend newspaper subscription, etc} to the new account, we had some prorated charges. In the long run, it’s just a small inconvenience compared to being responsible for over $1,200 that we didn’t spend.