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!!