Monthly Update

Welcome to a new month!!  I was happy to see February leave....

Before I get to the financial stuff...I am excited to say I have 200 followers now!  It was at 196 forever!  So I thank all of you who are "official" follower, as well as all of you who still read but haven't followed . 

I updated my side totals, and we are now approximately back to where we were when G-man's car died in October (I say approximately because I don't have the exact number, but I know it was in the 66k range).  Everything went down...yay!

I am starting to be disgusted with interest...I make a $200 payment, and $70 goes to interest.  Heck, on G-man's car...the payment is $127 and $48 goes to interest.  Not cool.  I really don't want to play the card shuffle game....transfer balances to get the 0% interest.  The initial fees would be about 5 months of interest just there.  So unless the 0% was for an extended time...not sure it would be worth it.  Plus, to transfer it back to another 0%...there is another set of fees.  Right now the balance on the credit card is the lowest interest card we have (9.24%)

But the interest really eats into the progress.  Bummer.

I do have to make a correction from something I said the other day.  I said in March we would hit the 50% mark for the retirement loan.  Nope...that is April.  I jumped the gun on that.  However,we will be below 20k in March, and will be below the 50% mark after the second paycheck in April.

Now that we are just about past the snow season...my hours will stabilize at work.  All the snow days added up to 15 hrs of work that I missed in February (I did work from home as much as I could, but some things just have to be done at the office).  That said, we have been able to save $300 from G-man's second job....we will see if we can sustain this.  If so, then in a few months we will make a bulk payment to something.  Debating on the G-man's car (which is the highest interest rate, but not by much), or the CC...which is where I am leaning.

I have a separate post about the mini piles of money we have and our thoughts on that.  That will be later in the month.  The teaser....debt repayment vs investment vs savings?

One other thing I am sort of looking forward to is getting to 63k.  Per my recorded history...the lowest our debt has been since I started blogging was $63,768.88.  We are $2800 away from that.  It will have taken us just under 3 years to get back to this point, which is something I am not proud of.  But it will signify that we have dug out of all the back slide we have had in the past 3 years, which has included numerous car issues (including purchasing 2 cars), personal issues, medical stuff (surgery, procedures, dental work), as well as pet illness, appliances that died, home repairs, and so many other things.  This should happen next month....if I have done the math correctly, accounting for that darn interest!

The medical/dental is still around, but very close to being caught up.  I am still dealing with issues with the medical supply company.  We will "probably" just pay it off once we distribute the mini money piles.  I just know it will come back at some point.  

So March is a gateway month toward greener pastures....I am looking forward to it!  Meanwhile, I am just going to enjoy it and look forward to the upcoming milestones.