I-78 Commute's Financial Ramblings

I have a friend. Yay! OK actually he's been my best friend since we were 8 years old (that's awhile back!) He's the kind of guy that would stick his neck out for you no matter what. We pretty much share everything about each other's lives because we can trust each other completely. So it KILLS me to find out he's struggling financially. Well not struggling per se...but he just has never had a plan. He's the kinda guy that if he had the tools I would have no doubt that he could succeed.

That being said I've tried a few things to get him rolling on a plan. He knows we worked the baby steps and he's read TMMO and even gone through FPU with his spouse. I understand Dave isn't one size fits all so I'm not pushing him to follow Dave's plan. I've said I don't care what you do but do something. I think procrastination is his worst enemy.

So here's a quick synopsis: He's 35, wife is 46. Two kids (his stepkids) in college. Net income: $12k/mo. Net expenses: $6k/mo. Debt: $84k (47k student loan, 20k car 1, 12k car 2, 4.5k credit card.) No liquid savings and not currently contributing to retirement (has $150k in retirement.) I'm sure you can already see my frustration just on this little bit of info.

I don't know if anyone else has someone they know in a similar situation. Based on the numbers that float around about people not saving enough and not putting enough away for retirement I'm sure there are a lot more people out there like my friend. I just really want to help him...even though I can only provide the map. I can't drive him there...he needs to put it in drive and go. I'm just trying to think of ways to help him get to where he wants to go. Any advice as always is appreciated.

Most of you here already know how vital it is to have an emergency fund setup for those times when Murphy kicks the door in and sets up shop in your life. I have an example of how not having that baby EF can cause undue stress!

I was at the car dealer yesterday getting my car inspected when a gentleman came out from the service area in a bit of a panic. He had been having problems with his brakes and was told it was going to cost him $300 for the repairs. I thought he was going to pass out with how red his face was! He said "My car has 160,000 miles on it and I don't have $300 to fix the brakes!" I thought to myself "Oh boy could this guy use a $1000 baby emergency fund!" I didn't engage him directly only because he was so flustered and just started pacing really fast around the dealership but it triggered in my mind BABY STEP ONE: $1000 in the bank.

Anyone else have stories like this when they're out and about? I found myself really feeling sad for the guy. He just seemed so stressed out about a $300 car repair bill. It's a friendly reminder to make sure you stock away that emergency fund money so you don't end up stressed to the max like our friend here.

August 2012 was a very good month for us financially. We have been blessed to have been given a sizable shovel to work with over the years but we were able to double that shovel in August (including payday coming up this Weds) with work bonuses, ebay sales and some Intellishop work. We're going to be able to use this last check to pay all of our monthly September bills and our mortgage due Oct 1 before September begins and that's always a great feeling.

I opened up a 529 plan for my granddaughter and since she's less than a year old hopefully down the road she isn't going to have to think twice about where she'll want to go for college.

We've been able to really simplify our budget over the past few years and it's become a well-oiled machine. There are a few things on our budget today that when we were in debt we certainly considered frivolous. Now that the only debt is our primary mortgage we've been able to relax a bit and enjoy life a lot more. The kids being out of the house and on their own (for the most part) has also lightened some of the everyday expenses that we had when they were under our roof.

So here comes September and it's looking pretty good. Hopefully there aren't too many Murphy's hiding in the bushes!

September 2012

Income
Paychecks (after 401k contributions): $11450

Expenses
Maids: $310 ($155/visit)
Netflix: $8
Electric: $360
Life Insurance: $147
Cable TV: $160
Everyday Expenses: $1000
Oct Mortgage: $2768

Total Expenses: $4753

Income - Expenses = $6697 for September.

EE is our cash spending categories like food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, electronics, pharmacy...basically the "out and about" spending.

That excess will be spread across the mortgage, savings and investments so we can continue to grow in multiple areas (I know DR would want it to go to the mortgage being on BS6 but we're happy with spreading it out across the friend with three hats (Save/Invest/Pay down mortgage.)

Anyone have those gift cards that you use up until there is a couple of bucks here or there and you just can't figure out what to do with them? If you do any shopping online it might be worth it to consider cashing them at Amazon. Amazon will issue a gift card directly to your email and you can redeem the gift cards on your account and accumulate a balance that you can spend at checkout. As long as you have a minimum of 15 cents you should be able to redeem the card there. This goes for those generic Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/Discover gift cards of course (not merchant cards.) We just redeemed quite a few cards and accumulated a 21 dollar balance which my wife will turn into some music and a kindle book.

I'll note that I have one Visa gift card from TD Bank that doesn't seem to want to redeem (and it has a $12 balance...darn it) so if you have a card from a specific bank you may have to call them to find out the deal.

If anyone has any other great ideas for gift cards I'm all ears!

Over the years we've probably had our money in just about every so-called "big bank" on the planet. We had moved our money to Commerce Bank a few years ago and were really happy with them. Then TD Bank took them over and ever so slightly they've been taking away benefits and making it a little bit more expensive to do business there. I also have family in the Midwest and the West Coast and TD just doesn't seem to be where I need to be when I travel.

We have also been ING customers for about 11 years now and I have always been very loyal to them. They were a very important part of our path to debt freedom since keeping the emergency fund with them kept it somewhat out of the immediate area. Now that Cap One has taken them over and the interest rates have been dwindling we're not as keen on the Orange Dot as we used to be.

I think the point of my rambling is to just remind everybody if you're not happy with your bank you have a LOT of choices out there. It's making me woozy comparing all the different banks to each other. This is a case where personal finance really is PERSONAL because you really need a list of what you want out of your bank. Is it convenient? Can you get your money out when you need it? Do you have to wait an eternity to access your deposits? Do you do mobile banking? Is it free? Do you have to have a minimum balance? Do they offer mobile check deposit? Do they link with Quicken? Do they hammer you with fees? E-I-E-I-O.

if anyone out there is happy with their bank I'd be happy to hear about it. You never hear enough about the happy customer...especially in today's era of negative news. It'd be nice to hear a happy note or two from the Saving Advice realm about where they're putting their hard earned dollars (and cents!)

FWIW we also have money at a credit union. I love credit unions because they're very personal and personable but they also have their limitations for us in spots.

Thanks (in advance!)

I know the topic probably could cover a host of different topics but I'm actually referencing a game that we like to play with our day-to-day finances to make them a little less boring. As the nerdy husband I scoff at finances being boring but my wife's more smiles and sunshine than calculators and computers so we like to play a game that takes very little effort to setup and really gets the whole family into it. Even my kids find this way of relating to personal finance more friendly and fun so maybe it makes sense for you to give it a shot in your home.

All you need is a calendar and two different colored markers (preferably a color you like and a color you don't like...you'll see why soon.) I like to use a dry erase calendar but those big flat desk calendars work nicely too. Set it up anywhere you like but usually somewhere common that's friendly to everyone.

Now grab the marker you really like and write in your net income for today (or whatever day you start the game.) If you get paid monthly or bi-weekly or weekly just figure in what you average per day. It doesn't have to be exactly precise but you want to get an idea of how much you make each day you work. An easy example is you make $3000 a month so you'd divide $3000 by 30 days and get $100 a day. So you'd write in $100 in today's date. If your spouse/significant other works too you can add both daily incomes together. Remember to use your happy marker.

Now go through your normal day. If you buy something do what you usually do to keep track of it. You don't need to put it in any category for the game...you just need to know what you spent. Anything you spend regardless of what method of payment just jot it into that day on the calendar with the marker you don't like the color of (we use red for bad and green for good.)

Now you can see in plain view on each day if you made more that day than you spent! What we like to do is write the total (good marker number minus bad marker number) in the bottom right corner and then update it as we go through each day. Obviously you'll have days when you get paid and you pay a bunch of bills at once (so that may be a negative day for that day) but by keeping the running tally you have a nice visual representation of how much you made vs how much you spent as you went along through the days, weeks and months. If you get extra income on certain days always add it to that day's happy marker total.

It's a very easy and fun way to track income and expenses on a very basic level. The real nerds can get really creative and calculate what an investment made that day or how much interest they were charged on that day on a debt. The main thing is not to take the game too seriously because you don't want to lose the people in your household that may not be so into the numbers. One thing it helps us with is impulse spending. Taking a quick look at the calendar before going shopping or going out to eat really makes us think a little harder about what we're going to spend our money on.

Just thought I'd share since we really enjoy playing the game in our house. Have fun with it!

Well I get home from work and as I'm switching my sunglasses off and putting my regular glasses back on I feel a SNAP! and they break in half right at the bridge. Doesn't that just figure. I now have my 1995 backups on and they're a little bothersome but they're doing the job for now. I called and left a message for my eye doctor and I'll probably be on the hook for at least one pair of frames. Back when we were digging out of debt I'd have probably panicked about how to pay for it (I'm still going to try Krazy Glue...although that never works considering how thin the bridge is.) Now I know I have plenty of money in the medical budget category and a new pair of frames is going to be a minor inconvenience instead of a Murphy tragedy.

Over the weekend DW (the wife!) and I cleaned out our master bedroom closet (well at least the bottom of it.) Normally my wife would stay well clear of this process but I enticed her by making it like she was at the store. She had dozens upon dozens of shoes and purses so I pulled them all out and put them in another room. Then one by one i brought each pair of shoes and each purse in and had her look them over. She got to keep, donate, ebay or toss the shoes depending on how attached she was to them. Instead of paying with cash she was paying with space. We have only so much space in our closet and I always give her the majority so I said you can keep enough to fill the shoe racks in the closet but once they were full we needed to compromise. She was great and we eliminated over 30 pairs of shoes! The closet now has a whole floor of space and she still kept a lot of shoes. We also emptied out all the purses and found a lot of change and even a few gift cards. I took the change to the bank today and put it in one of those penny arcades and we deposited $156.56 in change! I also deposited $169.23 from ebay sales to the checking account. Now she can get her hair done and I'll put the rest towards my glasses.

You can take anything that seems like a chore and turn it into a fun time (and cleaning out the closet ended up making us money...so talk about a no cost activity.) Who knows what you might have around the house that you don't need (and that someone else sure could use!)

OK so I thought I'd start the comeback trail by updating a few key points of where we're at. In case you don't remember our story we were buried under $117,500 of credit card debt when we finally got serious about getting our finances in order. It took a lot of work but we eventually dug out and got to debt freedom (thanks largely in part to this place and the Dave Ramsey way of thinking...the TMMO forums were very motivating and helpful for us.)

A few good bullet points since that debt free day:

1) I became a grandfather.

2) We're still debt free! For you DR fans we're rolling through BS6.

3) We're cash flowing both of our kids college educations.

4) We have a good sized emergency fund and are building savings as well. We're also maxing out our
Roth 401k's.

5) We still budget as if we were in BS2. Instead of having debt payments we have savings payments.

6) Credit cards are still not welcome. We've been there done that and we're not going back.

7) We were featured in a DR Gazelle Gazette (the newsletter) for paying off all the cc debt. It was awhile ago though...I haven't had an active subscription there in a couple of years.

8) We're still selling stuff on ebay for extra money!

9) I still listen to the DR FPU audio lessons on my phone at work in between songs. They're in my playlist.

Don't get me wrong it all sounds great but we still have to be very vigilant about our money. We have a good stream (I like that I don't have to call it shovel anymore) of income and we're content. Although I'm the nerd and still get OCD about doing budgets and the numbers all the time. I'm hoping by coming back I can continue to be accountable for our expenses (the expense tracker will come back to life) and hopefully some of the things I post will help others who may need some extra motivation to stay on the plan they're on and stay focused. We got to the point plenty of times where we said "is this really worth it" and I can tell you now sitting on the other side of that mountain of debt is one of the most beautiful views you can have. It's worth much more than just the numbers.

I can't believe how long it's been since I last updated my blog on SA. So much has happened since September 2009. I'm going to start back up in the hopes that it will help us stay focused on the task at hand and help others that might be wrestling with similar issues as we are. So this is a welcome back of sorts! I'm excited to keep our story going (and there is a lot to talk about!)

Well now that we're one day past payday and the budget has been implemented here's how it went down. Below is a copy of the budget I had created for the pay period from 9/2-9/15 with notes on how it was executed.

09/02 - 09/15
Income: $4741

Electric: $242 (PAID)
The Maids: $140 (9/8)
Netflix: $12 (9/8)
Equifax: $7 (9/13)

Cash: $500 (DONE ATM)
This covers food, clothing, entertainment, medical copays and any other discretionary expenses we have during the two weeks. We do this stuff in cash only because it works really well for us.

Son's birthday: $150 (DONE TXFR)
His 16th birthday was on August 25th and we need to deposit $100 to his checking account (was a gift from us.) We also are going to purchase him a dock for the car for his Ipod for $50.

Amazon: $10 (PAID)
This is for a replacement Tassimo filter.

HVAC Filters: $69 (PAID)
This buys us two replacement HVAC filters. I vac'd out the one we had in there but it is so bad I'm going to have to replace it. It's been in there for almost a year now so it's time.

Now for the other part. At this point we had $3611 left to spend and there were some important things to put the money towards.

Wedding Ring: $2911 (PAID)
I was able to get the ring back and it looks great. The wife was EXTREMELY HAPPY to get her ring back fully repaired (it had met an unhappy garbage disposal courtesy of our cat) and with a new diamond installed. Insurance did pay a portion of it but I still had to go out of pocket for nearly $3000. It was actually ready a couple of months back but we wanted to wait until the debt was gone before paying for it.

This left me with $700 to put to savings. We have a check coming next week for over $7000 which will be put to savings as well as we continue to bolster up the cash in the bank. I can safely say this was a fun budget to work through with no debt payments attached to it.

Oh and I almost forgot! I called our cable provider and was able to get a $16 discount on our monthly bill. All I had to do was ask! It's always a good idea to call up your utility providers like cable, phone and internet (even if you bundle) to see if they can do anything to help you save some money.

September is shaping up to be a great month in our household income wise so we should be able to do a lot of good with our money. We get paid biweekly on Weds so we're looking at 3 paydays in September and a bonus in the middle of the month to boost our income even more. I usually do our budgets per pay period and any bills that are due within the pay period get paid. We have a few things we need to pickup online so those will be budgeted into this pay period's budget.

Here's how it looks right now:

09/02 - 09/15
Income: $4741

Electric: $242
The Maids: $140
Netflix: $12
Equifax: $7

Cash: $500
This covers food, clothing, entertainment, medical copays and any other discretionary expenses we have during the two weeks. We do this stuff in cash only because it works really well for us.

Son's birthday: $150
His 16th birthday was on August 25th and we need to deposit $100 to his checking account (was a gift from us.) We also are going to purchase him a dock for the car for his Ipod for $50.

Amazon: $10
This is for a replacement Tassimo filter.

HVAC Filters: $69
This buys us two replacement HVAC filters. I vac'd out the one we had in there but it is so bad I'm going to have to replace it. It's been in there for almost a year now so it's time.

So far we've spent a total of $1130 and that leaves us with $3611 to use as we see fit.

What's really crazy is the only thing we actually HAVE to pay on this list is the electric bill. The rest of the list (other than the cash...which we could cut down in half) is wants. Now that we're debt free we feel we can open up the discretionary spending a bit more but we're still retaining 75 percent of this biweekly income. That's not a bad thing.

We still have some long term goals to work on as well. My wife's wedding ring is still at the jewelers and I believe it'll take $2700 to pick it up now that it's been repaired. FYI to everyone make sure you have a proper rider for jewelry on your homeowner's insurance policy. We only had a small reimbursement and we now have the rider but you have to get it appraised and get it on your insurance properly. Check with your agent as to what you need to do to do it right.

We also need to pay off our son's Spain Trip which I mentioned in an earlier post. That'll be exciting to see that gone.

We're also going to be funding Roth 401k's (15-20 percent of net income with a 25 percent match to a traditional 401k by the company), saving for cash flowing college (we start paying the piper in Fall 2010) and accelerating our mortgage payoff (increasing the amount to principal) so it's not like that money doesn't have anywhere to go. We have a long haul ahead of us but we're excited at the prospects of being able to knock all of this stuff out.

I just wanted to share the first cool thing we were able to do after clearing all of our non-mortgage debt. We were able to pay cash (well..debit card from our checking account) for our son (turns 16 tomorrow) to trek out of the USA to Europe in April with his classmates through a school trip. They'll be over there for 11 days total and the balance is due in full by December 19th. Well we've paid nearly $2000 out of the $3000 it cost already ($1750 of that $2000 in the last 4 days) and we'll be able to pay the remaining balance in full on September 2nd without batting an eye. A full three months + before the balance is due!

The best part is having the cash to do it instead of going into debt to do it. I can remember a time when that $1750 was going to minimum payments on credit cards. No more! Now it goes to things we WANT to do instead of obligations we HAVE to do. Yippie!

So for anyone mired in debt and wondering if it's worth the effort and sacrifice to bulldoze your way out...I can say absolutely! You can pay for a trip without paying more than the trip costs in credit card interest and fees.

I just wanted to send out a "thank you" for everyone here who gave us advice and ideas from the time I started this blog 2.5 years ago. We spent the last 4+ years wading around in over $75,000 of credit card debt and could never figure a way out (at its peak in April of 2008 it was at $110,000) and it took a lot of focus to finally just cut down the lifestyle and get it all paid off. I want to answer a few of the replies in the announcement here so here goes.

To everyone who sent congrats THANK YOU!! We really do appreciate it.

To crazyliblady: What we ended up doing to figure out how much we had to throw at our debt was to go line by line through each and every item we were spending money on and really decide if there was something we could do to cut it down. We ended up trimming out a lot of things we thought we couldn't live without and we basically used a zero based budget approach to make sure all the money was allocated before payday so there were no surprises. We did keep some money to the side for emergencies but not a lot because we didn't want to continue to get eaten up by interest. I would just list everything out and prioritize everything you spend money on each month and you can find all kinds of places to save. When it comes to credit cards make sure you don't use them (it's easier to pay them off when they're not nibbling back at you) and another thing we did to earn extra income was to sell little stuff around the house on ebay and craigslist. We made selling stuff we didn't need our 2nd job and were able to really help supplement our income that way (especially in the beginning.) Just try to focus as much of the extra $ as possible at the card and shut the card down so you don't incur any more payment than you have to.

fern: There wasn't really any trick to what we did. It was really just focusing as much extra income as possible at the lowest balance at the time. We had tried paying it off by interest rate before but really just kept spinning our wheels so we flipped to try lowest balance and that seemed to do the trick. We had three cards with $27,000+ balances but knocking them down one at a time really energized us to continue throwing as much disposable income at them as possible (we ended up putting about 50 percent of our income to the debt while we were working to pay it off. The really cool thing about that was we realized we could support the household on one income since my wife and I make around the same amount of money.) We did a lot of coupon shopping and sale shopping and cut out a lot of the stuff we did on cards before like vacations (we did go on one vacation but we had $10,000 in non-refundable reservations so we went and just used cash while we were away.) The cards went locked up in the drawer and then we closed a bunch of them down (we had way too many credit cards) because we were getting all kinds of fees (annual fees, monthly fees, etc) and it just didn't make sense to keep them open.

campfrugal: The synopsis is we paid off $117k in credit card debt over the last 15.5 months ($110k in APril 2008 + $7k in interest.) We did it by cutting down our lifestyle and just lining up the cards and paying them off one at a time. We availed ourselves of as much extra income as we could by cutting down lifestyle and budgeting our income to the last penny.

Don't worry I don't plan on leaving anytime soon now that the debt is gone. I'll continue to update the blog and try to add some words as to what we did and how we did it to get here. Again thank you everyone for the kudos and congrats as we are so happy to be done with debt!

Debt Tracker (08/14/09)
$0.00

Well we did it! We received a bonus deposit of $5000 on Friday and cleared the last $3815.04 from our debt. We are now debt free minus our mortgage! It's been a long battle between us and our debt load (which ended up being $117.5k) but we have finally climbed to the top of the mountain.

It's really nice to know that all of our income will be ours to keep. We're going to be able to pay cash on Weds for our son to go to Spain with his class a full three months before the payment is actually due. We paid cash and bought a patio table for our back patio (we had lost three due to wind) and this one has a heavy custom stone top so it'll be plenty heavy for the hilltop winds. We'll also be able to cash flow our daughter's college education starting next fall AND our son's in a couple of years. We are so excited!

All I can say is to anyone who is frustrated with debt just get on a budget and keep the faith! You can do this. If we can do it anyone can. Trust me on that.

WOO HOO!!!

This is the end of the debt reduction tracker! Not sorry to see it go at all.

I can't believe we're less than one month away from having paid off ALL of our non-mortgage debts! $117k and change will FINALLY be gone after all this time (about 16 months of really cutting back and staying focused!)

We made a payment today of $2800+ on the last card and our total balance left to pay is now under $4k so we can really see that light shining at the end of the tunnel! It'll be bittersweet but I really can't wait to be rid of a debt reduction tracker category.

Here's the update:

Debt Tracker (08/05/09)
Card 1: $3815.04 (8.99)

Woo hoo! September 2nd looks like the date!

Well we are just about through the end of July and we were able to cash flow the trip to the Outer Banks with family for around $1500 all tolled. The house and the car rental were taken care of by relatives so we just had to pay for activities and food during the week (when you have 10 people around it makes it that much more expensive.)

We're down to under $7000 now until ALL of our non-mortgage debt will be paid off and then we'll just have the mortgage to go! The timing is there for us to be totally out by mid-September so we're really looking forward to that.

We've cleared over $110,000 in credit card debt in just about 15 months (it'll be 15 months on July 30th.) We can't wait to see the rest of this go!

Here's the update:

Debt Tracker (07/23/09)
Card 1: $6552.56 (8.99)

Well you knew that Card 1 wasn't going quietly into the night so they did hit us with a $138.45 finance charge but we batted them back by selling some old computer stuff to a friend and now we're under $9k to go! Since July is going to be a slow month for us I'm doing what I can to generate a few extra bucks here and there and it starts with this $243 payment!

Debt Tracker (06/30/09)
Card 1: $8968.92 (8.99)

Soooooooooo close! July is going to be painful though. Normally I would make a $3000 payment (or so) on Card 1 with our first round of paychecks but I have to hold onto the majority of the money thanks to a preplanned vacation for the family to the Outer Banks. My mother rented the house and to cut down on costs we're driving the family down for the week. I'm going to keep as much of the $ as I can for the vacation and then once we get back throw everything left over that I can muster at the debt but I'm sure it'll be a lot less than $3000. SIGH...this is a battle I gave in on so I think I am doing the right thing. Everyone has been great about this whole process so I don't feel as badly about it and it doesn't change our debt free date of September (we will be getting a bonus check in Sept that will pretty much wipe out the remaining balance) but I still would have rather put it on this last card considering how close we really are.

Sometimes though you have to let off the reins a bit to keep the peace. I'd of course rather do no new debt than pay the card off and rack back up $2000 worth of expenses. That would really put a damper on the vacation.

Thanks for letting me vent!

Well other than the mortgage of course. We made a payment of just under $1500 today to knock our last card down to just over $9000. So since 4/30/08 we've paid off $108,217 of credit card debt!!! So close to getting completely rid of all of our debt! It's a great feeling.

Here's the tally:

Debt Tracker (06/22/09)
Card 1: $9073.83 (8.99)

I'm out of town all week for work after being out of town since last Weds for play (Father's Day, wife's birthday and more) but we received a $1600 bonus I was able to apply to this last card.

So a pleasant update to the reduction planner:

Debt Tracker (06/22/09)
Card 1: $10570.26 (8.99)

Almost under $10k!

What does an extra $20 do for me on a $12,190 balance? It makes the balance go to $12,170.

There are a lot of people out there that would say that putting $20 on this last card is a waste of time. Well anytime a credit card balance's interest is calculated on the average daily balance ANYTHING you put towards your credit card debt is no waste of time at all!

So to update:

Debt Tracker (06/12/09)
Card 1: $12170.26 (8.99)

Take that credit card debt!

Well as some of you probably know Microsoft has decided to discontinue the Microsoft Money software package. In an effort to cut costs up in Redmond they are doing away with certain software suites that they feel aren't as useful as they once were (like Encarta and Money) and software they haven't fully developed (like OneCare Antivirus.)

To me as a user of Money since March of 2000 this is a really dark day. In the past nine years I have purchased six different versions of the software and actually still have most of the versions on CD in my possession. The latest of which (Microsoft Money Plus Premium) I really enjoyed using and customizing to work best with what I need to get out of a comprehensive personal finance software suite. I really wish Redmond would reconsider the decision and plan on writing a letter stating my feelings but I know it will not do a lot of good.

I have dabbled in alternatives (Quicken being the obvious one, Mint, YNAB, etc.) and none of them really met my needs like Money did. Money was simple where it needed to be and was more complex where I wanted it to be (like with reporting) and that mix really made it fun to manipulate all of my numbers to play out different "what if" scenarios and things like that. Money's inventory module made me think and actually go room by room to track what we owned and made it easy to attach pictures to those lists. I use it daily (multiple times a day in fact) and have never had system problems or corruption of my data (something I've heard Quicken users really fight with right now.)

So now that I've rambled on about Money I wonder if there are others like me out there who are dismayed about this announcement and really will miss the product that we all "grew up with" over the years. It really is a sad day.

FYI you will have two years from the day you activated the Money Plus software packages to still get online updates to your accounts but after Jan 31, 2011 everyone's online access will be shut down. You can still manually update the software yourself beyond that date but you will not be able to use any of the online features. If you have a Money Plus software package and want to know when your copy will cease to work online click on Help and About Microsoft Money and you'll see the date there.

Well I had hoped we would be under $20,000 in total debt left to pay off (minus the mortgage of course) and lo and behold we're there! As of today we have paid off over $105,000 worth of credit card debt in about 13.5 months. We are getting really close to being completely debt free and it's exciting to know how hard we worked is finally paying off.

So here is the updated total:

Debt Tracker (06/10/09)
Card 1: $12190.26 (8.99)

That's it! Only $12k to go...I feel really good about it all and I can't wait to be rid of the debt tracker once and for all!

Well another payday goes by and another chunk comes off the last card in thd debt reduction game! We were able to fork over around $3300 onto Card 1 so here comes the new update:

Debt Tracker (05/14/09)
Card 1: $22222.70 (8.99)

We should be under $20k by this time next month. Woo hoo!

Well today is my favorite day (payday!) so even though evil CC1 decided to throw a $226 interest charge my way I fought back with a payment of $955 to knock it down a notch. Still a ways to go with this one but I hope to be done with it soon enough!

Debt Tracker (04/29/09)
Card 1: $25475.94 (8.99)

This brings the payoff total after one complete year of really being serious about paying this down to $91,683.35.

Yippie!

It's official...we're finally over the $90,000 paid level in our scramble to get rid of all of our non-mortgage debt asap.

Today is payday and we were able to throw an additional $3100+ at the last credit card. So here's the update:

Debt Tracker (04/15/09)
Card 1: $26204.24 (8.99)

Since April 30th, 2008 we've paid off $90,728.50 in credit card debt! It's the only debt we have/had other than our mortgage so the sooner we get to zero the better!

Just wanted to celebrate a little bit with everyone. Woo hoo!

Today we got our tax return back and after paying our first estimates for 2009 to the IRS, PA and NJ we were able to knock Card 1 below $30,000! We're really excited knowing we've still got a couple of paychecks yet to come in April and we're really looking forward to making more of a dent in the 20's. We've paid off over $87,000 worth of credit card debt (including an additional $7k in accrued interest) since late April 2008! Woo hoo!

So close to the finish line!

Debt Tracker (04/10/09)
Card 1: $29367.62 (8.99)

Today is payday and we really didn't have a lot of bills to pay (yay!) Next month is really going to be fun with three checks on the 1st, 15th and 29th but for now I was able to take a big bite out of lonely Card 1. It's great that it is the ONLY card left to pay off because with the fewer number of bills coming in the easier it is to really track them (and once Card 1 is done then the only debt we will have to our names will be a mortgage. Yippie!)

I cash flowed my vehicle registration, took cash out for day-2-day expenses (we only use cash for food, entertainment, household stuff, etc.), put some money in the kids bank accounts (18 yo has checking and 15 yo has savings that will soon flip to checking) for work they did (they get $2 for every year of age per day), bought a programmable thermostat (checked consumer reports first to make sure it was a best buy and it was easy to program...looks like it) and some CFL bulbs from thebulb.com (they have pretty good prices and a portion of every bulb bought goes to help the environment...not to mention the bulbs themselves!)

Had $4600+ left over for Card 1. Yippie!

So since 4/30/08 we've paid off $76,271.80 in credit card debt and we have what's left below to go. It just feels like we're really starting to see the finish line.

Debt Tracker (03/18/09)
Card 1: $34090.02 (8.99)