My Wife's Loans are Paid Off!!

It has been a LONG time, but I wanted to let everyone know that we have paid off my wife's loans in their entirety.

We had some extra money this month, approximately $8,257 and we decided to pay it to the loans. We are going to NYC in October to celebrate paying them off. 

We will stay focused, but this is a BIG victory for us. We have $32,750 left on my student loans. Hopefully those will be gone in the next year and a half. 

We will also bought a rental property last month as a long-term investment; 3/3 with $1,200 a month in income at The University of Georgia. 

I am hoping this provides me with motivation to post again. So sorry for the lack of updates on our end. 

Hope everyone is doing well!

Lending Club Update

Good afternoon everyone! 

I wanted to drop a quick update on our Lending Club venture we have been doing for the past 5 months or so. The screen shot you see up above is from our account. As you see, all of our loans are current and one is fully paid. I was surprised by that one and a little upset because I only made $1 in interest. Anyway, I invest in high interest loans so that I can get my money back quickly if they default. I have not had any missed payments yet...*knocks on wood*. It has made us $7 in interest and we are paid back about $4.00 a month with principal and interest. 

We have been pleased with it. We are still not completely comfortable with it, so we only do $25 a month. The downsides would be the amount of time it takes for the money to transfer. We have it automated for the 27th of each month. I am able to invest that money by the 5th day of the next month. Crazy, right? Why does this take so long? In addition, once the money is available, it can be tied up while the person waits to take the money from LC. I have had some money tied up for a month before the loan falls through and they release the money back to the account. Those would be the most frustrating parts to it. 

If you have any other questions, I will be happy to answer them in the comment section.  

Chipping Away

The picture was my motto for this week. I have not had a week that has felt this long a while. It was just one thing after another.

To start the week, I saw the scale starting to get bigger. I decided to go on a sugar-free diet this week. This is really tough for me. I enjoyed having a coke for dessert each night. I no have not had a coke since last Saturday. The first two days were really tough, but now it is not too hard to forgo that night time dessert. Since I have cut out as much added sugar as possible, I have lost 5 pounds while running 4 days this week. Not too bad, but we will see if I can keep at it.

Next came our landscaping quote, $9,500!!! $3,300 for a 2ft retaining wall, $1,700 for sod, 500 for grading, and $2,000 for a paver stone walkway! I am leaving out the $2,250 for the spinkler system. We told him very specifically we were looking to spend $5,000 and that was it. Ugh, I am so frustrated about this. Our backyard is a disaster and we really need someone to come in and build us a wall and clean up everything.

Next came our jersey order for my school's soccer program. I ordered navy blue jerseys, shorts, and socks. The company sent me the right color jerseys and socks, but the wrong color shorts! They sent me black. I don't think navy tops and black shorts would look good together, so I am having to send them back when we start playing games on Monday! Ugh! (That may be my word for the week, sorry.)

Yesterday was pay day and a solid way to end the day. I paid our mortgage for the month, saved our bimonthly amount of $600 and paid $150 to student loans. You may be wondering why we are saving so much rather than paying it to loans. It is because we are saving for that rental property venture we are looking to purchase in the fall. We are in a position financially now that we do not sweat the end of the month. I am usually able to pay an additional $200 or so at that time to loans.

Lastly, my wife may be getting a new position at work, which comes with a new salary, which means a raise, which means more money to pay to debt and save. We are going to keep our fingers crossed for this. We should know something Thursday of this week. IF she does get it, we could expect to see a $9,000 raise a year. 

Enjoy your weekend! It looks to be beautiful here in Atlanta.

ETSY Shop is Up!

We finally have the ETSY shop up. We are still working on some of the final details, but the items are up that we are offering. We will add some more in the future, but for now, we have two scarf designs and mittens. Later today, we will have a pillow cover that is beautiful! My wife is doing the final touches on it. We would love for you all to check out the listings - https://www.etsy.com/listing/180281276/hand-made-green-crocheted-scarf?.

I will keep you all updated on new items that make it into the store. We will be adding some winter hats that would be considered "beanies" in the next week or so. So check back to our blog or ETSY store for the new items.

If you have any questions/suggestions, we are always here to listen! We would love any insight you could provide from a buyer's standpoint. We would also love for you to buy something, too. :) All of the money made from ETSY will be used to pay down debt. The more items we sell, the more debt we pay off!

On a more infuriating note, we got our dues for our neighborhood association this week...$450! Normally, it is $85 a year. The reason we wanted this house was because there was no homeowner's association. The reason for the increase is because they want to do some sort of work on the front entrance sign and they received a quote for $17,000 for the work. The part that is infuriating is that they did not send out a vote to the homeowners. They just took it upon themselves to restore the front of the neighborhood. There was no warning to people about an increase of almost 500% on dues. Some people need to budget for that kind of money. Not everyone has this just lying around extra every month. Anyway, we think the front looks fine. Sure, it could be pressure washed, but there is no reason to replace it. I will try to post a picture of it later so you can see what I am talking about. 

I can't leave you all hanging on a down note, so our loan payment for my wife's loans were $125.47 this month! I am so excited about that. Considering we started this journey at $341.23 a month for her loans, we have made quite an improvement. We are right at the $9,000 mark now. We may go out to dinner to celebrate. I get so excited thinking about the possibility of these loans being gone by summer.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! We have some beautiful weather in Atlanta and I plan on being outside to enjoy it! 
 

Taxes Back

We got our refund back today! Woo hoo! BUT, we owe the Fed $565 and received $1,075 from state. So, we are only netting $510 back. However, this is excluding the cost of H&R Block to prepare our taxes for us. This cost us $430! I will NEVER go back to them. The only reason we used them was because we sold some stocks with some sizable gains and I was unsure of how to file those. I watched the tax guy's every move and I will prepare our taxes from now on. So, in total, we are only going to get $80 back. I will stick that in savings for a rainy day, I guess. I always strive to break even each year on taxes. I don't like getting a lot back because that means the government is your bank holding your money with no interest earned. And, I don't like owing for obvious reasons.

Now, on to more exciting things. The loan we paid off posted to our account and we are now 52% done with this debt! Also, it turns out we have more money than I thought I did. So, we will not be overdrawing or reaching an uncomfortable position. This month, we have cleared about $150 in monthly payments off of our student loans. That is sure going to be nice to pay towards our current balance on the 21st. That debt snowball is really rolling now and we should see some major progress.

When the weather was gross, I calculated how much money we have saved in interest by paying off some our loans 9 years early. In total, we have saved $6,670.61. Talk about a nice vacation when these things are done. We have talked about going on a cruise through the Mediterranean as a celebration to us for our hard work. The figure we have saved in interest will pay for it on its own. It is pretty exciting stuff.

I hope that provides all of our readers with some encouragement to pay off these loans and no longer be a slave to your debt! 

Snow Day Blues

As you see, it is a boring day here in Atlanta. The whole city shuts down when we get a little snow and ice, so I will not be going anywhere. With this being the case, I thought I would write another post.

When I am bored, I try to find things to do, which is probably not a good thing. So, I logged into our student loans yesterday and found one that was nagging me with a measly $300 balance left on it. It is a loan we are currently spending $50 a month on, so I decided I would go ahead and pay it off. I don't think we really have $300 at the moment, but I got so annoyed thinking about how small of a balance it was, and how it was not paid off. So, I decided I would just pay it off. I think we will be ok, but the peace of mind about it is worth it to me. I will update the debt totals tomorrow once the payment is processed.

Now, we are going to start knocking down a $4,200 loan. I would like to have this paid off by July. We have some summer money coming in, so I definitely think it is doable. That will free up another $40 a month. Once that one is gone, we will have just under $4,000 left on my wife's balance. It has been a tough road to get her balances down, but has definitely been worth it. Once they are gone, that is $350 a month back in our pockets. That will be our vacation money next summer.

Once her loans are gone, we will start to pay mine slowly. We will be eligible for the $17,500 loan forgiveness for teachers in Title 1 schools in 2 years. I currently have just under $34,500 left on them, but of that balance, I will only need to pay another $17,000 to get them at the forgiveness limit. So, we will pay slowly and make sure we do not pay more money than we have to. I have heard some people say this is not the easiest process to go through. If anyone has any experience with it, I would love to hear your story. Feel free to drop a comment.

Anyway, if this storm is in your area, I hope you all are safe and warm.

Debt Update

We just posted another $400 payment and have eclipsed the 51% paid off mark. It seems like every little payment puts such a huge dent in the total that it motivates us even more. I am looking forward to saving that $100 we would have otherwise spent to a loan. If it snows enough, I may calculate how much money I saved us in interest over the term of the loan. I think that number would be cool to see and provide you guys with motivation to pay these things off!

In other news, my wife is going to be starting an ETSY site where she will be selling scarves, gloves, hats, and other items that are crocheted. Once she has her site up and running, I will be passing along the link so you all can check it out. Everything she sells on there will be used to pay down the debt. It is something she enjoys a lot, so why not make them, and sell them (hopefully) to pay down more debt? It is a no-brainer.

We are going to be doing some landscaping in the back yard in the next couple of weeks. I will post some before and after photos of it so you can see. We will be getting a retaining wall made, a new walk way, sod, grading, and sprinklers. Afterwards, we will slowly start filling in with some different plants and trees. We are really looking forward to it. We have been saving some money for it for a while and I think it will add immense value to our home.

I hope to be able to get you all more information on the ETSY page this week. Hope everyone is safe with this winter storm.

Getting Back on the Saddle

So Sorry to all of our readers. There really is no excuse to not post an update for this long. We have been busy with work and debt, but there is no reason why we can't update our readers.

However, I have been posting our updates on debt and keeping those current. If you have been following, we have been aggressively paying off our debt, and as of today, we are over 50% paid off!! WOO HOO!!

It has been a tough road, but now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. On the wife's loans, we only have $9,800 left. I will have these gone by the end of the summer. That will put $350 a month back in our pockets. I cannot wait. We are still paying the minimums on mine because we will get $17,500 forgiven in two years.

I definitely did something questionable to pay off a large chunk of loans. I have a Roth that I stopped contributing to and it was not earning a lot of money because I was in some questionable mutual funds at best. So, I decided to sell that off because I would get a guaranteed 6.55% return on the interest saved by paying off two loans. That moved has freed up about $150 a month in payments and allowed me to apply that to the next loan. With that payment schedule, and summer money, that $9,800 should be gone by the end of July according to my calculations.

We have also been saving aggressively. We are looking at buying our first rental property at the end of the year. We have another investor that will go in 50/50 with us. This is a new idea and definitely risky, but I think long-term it would be a good investment for our family. I will post updates (hopefully) on this as it progresses. Nothing will happen until I pay off the rest of that $9,800.

Again, sorry for not posting an update in so long! I will do my best to post at least once a week as that is my new year's resolution.

Hope everyone has had a good start to their new year!

Crazy Week

Sorry for not posting last week. We had one long week.

First, we decided we would refinish our kitchen cabinets. They were this ugly, stained, moldy, and nasty looking brown with some gross glossy finish. We assume they were from 1986 when the house was built. This turned out to be quite a task. We had to sand all of the cabinets down, prime, and paint. We have the cabinets on the wall complete, but not the cabinet doors.

Second, we noticed that our AC was running hot so we called over our maintenance company. They came out Tuesday morning and the meeting only took about 5 minutes for them to figure out the problem. The compressor in our downstairs unit is done. This unit was installed in 1986 and is original to the house. So, we got 4 quotes done and the cheapest was $7,500 for just one unit and a furnace. We have two units and two furnaces that are at a minimum 13 years old.  So, we definitely want to replace everything. The quote we decided on costs us $11,595. This includes two 16-SEER 2 stage AC units, two furnaces at 95% AFUE, and a FREE water heater. I negotiated with the company and told them our water heater was 17 years old and if we were going to spend nearly $12,000, they should replace our water heater for free and they obliged with no problem. This REALLY sucks. That is a ton of money, but it is a necessary expenditure in order to upgrade our units to achieve savings on our bills each month. Luckily, we knew these units would need to be replaced and have saved for it. Also, we looked into some rebate programs and stand to see $900 of it back. This is going to slow down our debt payments a little bit because I had to use some of our summer money from our various jobs to pay for this.

On the bright side, this is the last thing we knew we had to pay for. All in a year, we replaced the roof ($9,500), the AC/Water Heater ($11,595), and painted the exterior of the house ($4,600). If anything else comes up, it will be a complete surprise. 

Lastly, our student loans finally transitioned over. I doubt we will be able to pay anything extra to them this month, but I will post some updated totals in the next couple of days.

Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

Moment of Excitement

Logged in last Friday to check on the interest accrued to our loans and saw that there was a zero balance on what was just over $25K. I was so pumped for a second. I did not understand why it was a zero balance, but I didn't care. Then, I thought it was too good to be true, and it was. Our loans had been bought out and transferred over to another loan carrier. Luckily, it is one we already use and makes it much easier on allocating our payments. I will update our debt totals once the balance shows up on the new account.

Sorry for not posting as frequently. I have been working at the local nature camp for these past two weeks. I really decided I do not like kids between 7-9. I find them annoying for some reason with their complaining and he said/she said stuff. However, the money is wonderful and the people I work with are nice. Only 3 more days of that.

We just got back our tax return and it was more than expected just over $1,000. We plan to mount the flat screen and buy a rug for our living room which is an awkward set up. I will post a before and after picture to show you guys. I anticipate that this will cost altogether about $500. We will just save the other $500. We are up over $9,000 in savings and other cash accounts. The market has been on a little tear the past couple of days and we have made some money.

Over 30% Paid Off!

Good Morning Everyone!

We are over 30% paid off now! We are starting to see that debt total start slipping away pretty quickly, which provides us with even more encouragement to knock all of these loans out! Some of the debt totals are wrong and I will need to fix them as they update, but the bottom line is correct. By the beginning of July, we will have paid off an additional $3,000 or so. This morning I just submitted a $1,510 payment since I was paid last week for my summer tutoring business. I will also have my two weeks at the local nature center coming up. I was able to pick up morning duty for the second week for an additional $100 so I will be receiving $1,300 for that. Also, the wife was able to work an additional 6 days this summer at her school which will pay her $85 a day, so we will get an additional $510 to pay towards loans. Pretty exciting stuff going on.

Update on the $500 gift card...it is all gone. We needed two new front tires for the car and that cost $250. Then, I bought a new suit which was needed badly for the wedding we have next week to go to, and about 5 new dress shirts, some ties, and dress socks for work. I was really wanting a Tony Gonzalez jersey, but I decided to be an adult and use the money for things I really needed. Stinks being an adult.

On another note, we won UGA season tickets for the upcoming season! We are pretty excited about that. It is a bit of a financial commitment with the 100 miles in gas we will drive every other weekend, but I figure it is a good way to reward ourselves for our hard work over the past 9 months.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Decisions, Decisions

Over the weekend, we had a call for a friend to go to the Brave's game. This was one of the bigger series of the year against the Nationals. The friend called us about 2 hours before game time and invited us to the game. Since it was such a big series, the cheap seats were $15. Because of our student loan debt, we politely declined. When we did this, our friend called us lame and asked what better things we had to do that night. We responded saying we had student loan debt and we could not afford to spend $45 that night with tickets and parking excluding grabbing something to eat on the way. I guess to some people think that $45 is not that much money, but not us. That is 1/5 of one of our current loans. I was pretty upset about this. I do not understand why people accept debt and that it is OK to carry them into their 40's. I refuse to owe anyone money at 40 including our mortgage.  

Dave Ramsey warned us about this. He told us people would think we are crazy and call us losers for not going out to dinner every night, or see that new movie. We will just carry on doing our thing paying off debt and then we will enjoy life much more without monthly payments.

Speaking of movies, we went to see that new Fast 6 movie this weekend. Don't worry, we have about $100 to AMC movies in gift cards from our students. I would NEVER spend $11.25 to see a movie. Back to the movie, it rocked! It was pretty unrealistic, but was definitely action-packed. Probably my second favorite to the 5th movie. I love The Rock in them and I hope he comes back for the 7th. Yes, they foreshadow a 7th movie at the end of the newest one. If you need help clarifying the meaning of the preview for the 7th, I will be happy to explain! :)

Lastly, tomorrow is our three year wedding anniversary. I have been saving restaurant gift cards for 6 months for this day. We will be dining at Uncle Julio's, a place we would never dream of going because the average entree is $15, but we have some gift cards to go there, so we should not have to spend too much.

Still waiting on the loan's to update. I really hate the wife's student loan company. They are irritating. One more reason to pay these things off!!

Loan Cancellation Update #2

Called this morning to ask why my second year of teaching was not counted and they told me it would count once August rolled around. They also told me that my account would be frozen and I WOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY ANOTHER DOLLAR FOR THAT LOAN!! WOO HOO!! This loan was our biggest loan at nearly $8,300 and we were paying $100 a month for just that loan. Now, I do not have to pay $100 a month. We will be rolling this $100 into another loan every month now. If I would have seen this forgiveness earlier, I would not have needed to pay a single dollar to it, but I ended up paying off about $700 in principal. Oh well, I am saving $8,300, I think I will be OK. All I have to do now is submit my paper work every August.

With that loan forgiven, we are not under $70,000 in loans and 28% paid off! We definitely beat our goal, but we will not slow down. Hopefully by the end of the year, we can pay off another 7% of loans and get to the 35% paid off mark come December 31st.

This is a good start to the week. Hope all of you have a similar start!

Enjoying Summer on a Budget

Hello again, I'm here to pass along free things to do in the summer.  This is the first summer my husband and I have off together, as we are both currently working as teachers.  While it's great to have all this extra free time, it's quite the problem when you don't have the budget to go anywhere or do anything that costs a lot of money.  We have had to promise each other not to go "looking" for things to do around the house, because it will likely turn into a headache and very expensive project. Therefore, I've decided to peruse the web for free things to do throughout the summer and pass these suggestions on to you.

The first "free" thing we did this past week was attend a Food Truck event at a neighborhood park.  This is a new thing in our community as of two weeks ago, and I think it's a great idea.  There are different food trucks each week (about six) and a live band and activities for the kids.  It's a major plus that it's walking distance from the house, so we were able to save gas and walk the dogs at the same time! While dinner wasn't free (it was $15 for both of us), this was a great way to spend the evening and do something that we hadn't done before.

So look around your area for food truck gatherings, take the kids, pets and a blanket and have a cheap (if not free) night out.  Another suggestion is to take a picnic, or at the very least your own drinks, and go enjoy the free music.

Stay tuned for more fun and hopefully free events we do this summer.  Here's to not being bored and saving money!

Loan Cancellation!

 

I told you guys a few posts ago that I was bored at work and I found that I could qualify for a 15% cancellation of my Perkins loan. Well I heard back and I qualified!! Woo hoo! The original loan balance was for $8,310.93. It is now down to $6,960.93; a reduction of $1,350! This is actually a decrease of 16.2%. They apparently base the 15% on the original loan amount which was for $9,000. I am pretty excited about this. This was one of our biggest loans with a 5% interest rate.

As exciting as this is, I am going to call them on Monday and ask them why I did not get the other 15% decrease. I should qualify for another 15% cancellation because I have been teaching for two years in an area of need at a Title 1 funded school. I know I am being greedy, but I definitely need another 15% forgiven. That would be a total of $2,700. Next year, this number will go up to 20% forgiven.

If  you have student loans, please go scour the internet for different forgiveness options on your student loans. They have all kinds of forgiveness for different areas of public service, so be sure you look. It could definitely pay off! If you have questions, I will be happy to help!

What to do?

About two months ago, I sold off some of our mutual funds and individual stock in order to get a healthy balance to invest in a stock. Altogether it was about $4,400. I decided I would find a pretty big company and invest all of that money into it. Yes, I know, very risky. I did my due diligence and found Icahn Enterprises. This is the investment vehicle owned by billionaire Carl Icahn. I figured he would be a pretty safe investment considering he has a lot more money than I do and he does not want to see his money decrease. So I took a shot and I invested in his company at a share price of $67. I was able to get 67 shares at that price. Not to mention, Carl pays his stock owners a $4 dividend on every share.

I followed this stock closely and used stop-losses as it started going higher. It was a very volatile stock trading up or down 1%- 2% a day. Eventually it got to my sell point of $90, then the stock tanked and I sold at $87. So, I made almost $1,300 with that stock. Now I have about $5,700 to invest with. I am not sure what to do. The market seems to be very unstable recently. The Fed can't decide what it is going to do and the market does not seem to like that. Now would certainly not be time to be risky. I need some healthy growth stocks that have had a dividend for quite a while. I am looking at a company like Coke. It is a little on the expensive side with a P/E at 21, but it seems to be going through a pull-back right now. It would certainly be a good entry point.

Another one is Costco. They have been on a tear recently. Their earnings are improving and their P/E is high at 25, but EPS is 4. So the multiple is not bad here.

I also question if I should get in a mutual fund. Tanner was correct about FNMIX. That thing has done nothing but go down since I bought it in February. So, I saved a few months of retirement contributions and purchased FBIOX, which is a mutual fund around health care. It has returned close to 35% this year alone. I wonder if I should put my $5,700  into this mutual fund as well and see what happens. I am definitely looking for risk so that I can see some upside, but do not want to be too crazy.

I would love to hear what you guys think, or if you have had any success recently with investments. I would love to know what you invested in and why. 

Tax Update

Good Afternoon Everyone!

We got an "Annual Notice of Assessment" from our tax commissioner. This number is fantastic compared with the $5,100 we spent last year. The number came in at $3,394.87! Woo hoo! It looks like our $2,100 mortgage will go away pretty quick. I am faxing in this letter and they will post the changes to the account within 5 business days.

It looks like they honored our homestead exemption like they said they would. Also, our home's value decreased $20,000 to just over $250,000, which is what we paid for it. This I am not happy about, but our local school system has been struggling recently replacing board members and fighting accreditation issues. Moreover, we are not looking to sell at this moment so I won't lose too much sleep over it, but I would like our value to slowly climb back up.

This is extremely relieving. I was literally losing sleep over this payment. It looks like we pay it this month, but next month it should come back down. Now we can focus back on paying down our debt! Right now, we have about $900 waiting to clear and post. Once this is done, I will give you guys an update on the debt total. We are going to fight hard to make it to that 25% mark. When our escrow gets figured out, we should be good-to-go with meeting our goal. According to my calculations, that means we will need to payoff $5,200 worth of loans to reach that mark. This should be feasible considering the summer money we are set to make.

I used the $500 gift card to buy two new tires on the car today. This was overdue and something we definitely needed. That cost was $234. My granddad told me to never skimp on tires, so I have always bought the same tire throughout my ownership of the car. Of course they are the most expensive touring tires, but since we are reliable on this car only, I can't afford not to have the best.

To top off this good day, Chik-fil-a was giving away chicken sandwiches today! I only spent $1.50 on my lunch. I cannot resist the sweet tea. I don't understand why. I guess it is just a southern thing. Any of you have the same problem?

Hope everyone has a great Thursday and weekend! 

Internet Searching

While at work on Friday, I happened to get bored and do research. I know you all probably think I am a slacker, but I finished cleaning my room and posting grades on Thursday so that I would not have too much to do on Friday. I decided I would look into student loan forgiveness programs available for teachers. Since I am a science teacher, I should be able to qualify for a lot of them.

I found a program for teachers in low-income schools, or teachers in an area of shortage. I qualify for both of these. I then read further into it and it would only apply to Perkins loans. These loans are loans made specifically through the 4 year school. They have a Perkins loan fund which they will issue to students after completing the FASFA. This fund is replenished by the principle and interest payments made by other borrowers. Lucky for me, I have a Perkins loan through my school and it happens to be the biggest loan I have; roughly $8,300. The program will provide the qualified teachers with 15% forgiveness through the first two years of teaching, then 20% for years 3 and 4, and 30% for year 5. If you are interested in this information, here is the link - http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/charts/public-service.

When I saw I was able to receive forgiveness for this much of my loan, I ran to my principal and told him to sign off on my paperwork. I got this in the mail on Friday afternoon. I am hoping to hear back from them soon. I have no reason not to qualify so I am pretty optimistic. I doubt I will hang on to this loan that long, but it will definitely be nice to get some relief at least for two years worth. If I qualify, and I if my assumption is right that they will forgive 30% of my total loan value because I have been teaching two years, then I will see a reduction of $2,493.28 bringing my loan balance to $5,817.65. That would be awesome! I will of course keep you guys updated on this.

We have done well to have some extra money in our checking account to absorb the new mortgage payment coming on June 1. I am not looking forward to this, but it could be worse I guess.

We have another $550 in payments waiting to clear and I am going to pay an additional $350, so another $900 will go to loans. This month we will have paid almost $2,000. That is pretty solid. Come the end of summer I project us to be under $70,000 and right around $67,000 in total debt. I am looking forward to that.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day. My family has a lot of vets and I always go pay tribute to them and their service at the North Georgia Cemetery where they are laid to rest. Be sure you thank anyone you know for their service.

Rejected

We were denied our request to close our escrow and release the funds. We now have a $2,100 a month mortgage payment for the foreseeable future. This number will go down once November rolls around, but for the next 5 months it is going to suck. There is really no other way to say it. Apparently if you have an FHA loan and do not put down 20% on a home, you are stuck with an escrow until you get 20% paid off. Take home story here, do not buy a home until you have 20%! Why didn't someone tell me that?

Our debt payments will obviously slow down and I do not think we will be able to hit that 25% mark. As bad as I want it, I just don't see how it will happen. 

I have some payments waiting to be cleared out. We paid about $800 to principal this month and once the accounts reflect that, I will update the totals again. 

I read the greatest article this morning about a family that paid off their mortgage in less than 5 years. Pretty incredible article that details how they did it. It provides me with some encouragement and new ideas. Maybe it will provide some of you the encouragement to kick that small credit card bill or put you on a path to being debt-free. Here is the article is you would like to read it http://homes.yahoo.com/news/paid-off-mortgage-less-5-years-230600500.html. 

Hope everyone has a great day. Last day of school with the kids today! And, faculty bowling after work! Woo-hoo!! 

Debt Totals Updated

Our loans finally updated our $700 payment! It took nearly a month, but here we are. We are now 19% paid off. That is not too bad considering we started 9 months ago. I just paid an additional $595 plus our monthly payment of $353. So, we have $900 going to loans this week. I am starting to collect some tutoring checks as well, so that total will start decreasing rapidly in the next two months. Our goal is to be 25% paid by October. It is hard, but I know we can keep at it. We have been doing a relatively good job at keeping on track except for December.

More to come soon in a future update.