10.25.2009

Debt coming along to being payed off

So since I haven't posted really any since I started back full time at work, I figured I had a few precious mins on a Sunday morning and would update our progress.

So remember these pesky loans and debts back in August?
Loan 1: $5,800 : 15% interest (UGHH!!!)
Student Loan 1: $4,400 : 6-8% variable interest
Student Loan 2: ~$20,000 : 5.625%
Student Loan 3: $1,500 : 5%
Sears: $700 : 0% till May

Well here's what has happened:
Loan 1: PAID OFF
Student Loan 1: PAID OFF
Student Loan 2: Next on list to be paid...a work in progress: ~$20,000 : 5.625%
Student Loan 3: PAID OFF
Sears: $430 : 0% till May (this will be paid off by May, but I just do 'monthly' payments)


YAY FOR US!
Our goals for 2009 have came and gone. We have managed to pay off about $20K in debt in the past year, along with buying a 'new' (aka newer model car) paid in full, sold the mustang, and still been able to buy things we wanted (but keeping in mind frugality).

Our goals for 2010 are:
Student Loan: $20K (hopefully completely pay off, or knock out a good portion)

Mortgage: We've been doing an extra $100/month to knock off 6 yrs of it, but I'm going to do an extra $150/month to knock off more. We will bump up the Mortgage with the amount we are paying off towards the student loan so we will have this mortgage paid off in less than 10 yrs and we are hoping closer to 6 years. (to note: mortgage started in 2008)

Life Insurance: I am upping my life insurance policy at work for myself $120K, my spouse $20K, and little one $5K. This is as much as I can for my spouse and little one at work and it comes as a combined thing. And it's pretty cheap too. For one year it's only an extra $120 for all of this. My goal is to get term and whole life insurance policies for both me and my hubby. We just need this for piece of mind and to take care of little one if ever anything bad were to happen.

Roth IRA's: Our goal is to open up Roth IRA's for the both of us to at least start saving some for retirement and little one's or (ones) college fund(s). This is a better option for us instead of 529's and Coverdell b/c if the little ones didn't want to go to a state school or even to college, we still have money in retirement for us. Plus we don't want their financial aid impacted b/c of $ we've saved for them.

Vacations (one big and one small every year): This is something important to us but prolly a luxury or not needed for a lot of people trying to cut their debts out. For us, we find it extremely important for a couple of reasons. 1: You only live once. 2: Money is just money. It's not worth it to work our butts off and not be able to get some good family memories in. 3: We didn't get to travel as much as we would of liked when we were kids and we want our kids to experience the world and everything with it. We've already started making lists of where we want to go and at what ages with our little one. Also, saving for these vacations will put us a couple years behind paying off our house. And that is okay with us now. We will get it paid off. But if we wait until we pay it off to go on vacation, you just never know. Someone might get really ill. It might become that much more expensive.

So here's our semi-list for now of what we've came up with vacation wise (and these are mostly the 'big' ones for each year:
2010: Jamaica/Hawaii - just for the hubby and I
2011: San Antonio - Sea World and maybe down to the Gulf and neat zoos and animal like stuff (little one will be 2 and we think seeing animals he'll be able to enjoy and understand)
2012: Another thing for just hubby and I?
2013: One of the BIG DISNEYWORLD vacations :) (we plan to do this every 4 years, so every child will have an experience, plus if little one forgets at 4, he'll remember at 8 and 12 ;)

Now we've come up with places, but not yet tied down which years are best:
Washington DC/Virginia Beach
NYC
Disneyworld (every 4 years)
Seattle
Vermont or Colorado (skiing)
Hawaii
San Francisco/Napa
Yosemite Park

We hope to travel across seas when he gets a little older prolly like 8+yrs.


We've done a lot though in the past couple months to pay off debt. It's pretty nice only having 1 student loan and a mortgage left.