It Is Actually Happening!

We get paid on the last business day of each month. Getting a paycheck only once a month was tough, at first, because if money runs low, there is no more coming in a couple of weeks later. On the other hand, it makes budgeting a lot easier, and we don’t have to juggle which paycheck will cover which bills. During the first week of each month, I update Quicken for all of our various accounts. This month I was updating balances in our debt reduction plan and I looked back to this time last year.

We spent a lot of time in the last year feeling frustrated because it seemed like the balances never went down. Well, I am happy to report that despite that frustration, we have eliminated $12,000 in debt in the last year! I believe the true total of what we paid off is actually $19,600 because we had financed a few things that were not included in last year’s totals. Some of what we financed was what we consider necessary, like vet bills, some was justifiable, like my stand mixer that allows me to make all of our bread, and some of it was just frivolous, like tickets to a show.

So, despite a significant amount of slip ups in our plan, we have lowered our total debt by a very large chunk in just one year! It can actually be done, even on one income, even with four kids. If you are trying to pay off debt, don’t get discouraged if your balances don’t seem to be going down. If you make a mistake and purchase something you shouldn’t, don’t give up. It really can be done, and you don’t have to be perfect, or live Little House on the Prairie style to do it.