It Will Be A Good Three Months for Debt Reduction Around Here

Photo credit: SailorJohn

I have been the most terrible blog host this week. Barely speaking with you, my faithful friends. I've just had a lot on my mind. At work. At home. In my sleep. But I felt I could at least tell you what is going on around here and I decided to brag about what the next two months SHOULD look like around here for our debt reduction plan.

This past month was great.  Scratch that.  It was really, really good.  But it could have been better.  You'll see how in a couple of weeks when I do my financial update/disclosure post.  We have spent far too much money on food - mainly on eating out - this month. It's our downfall. A true weakness. And you would think that knowing this, we'd try to make more of an effort in this area. This month, we have just thrown all caution to the wind and eaten out far too much.

So although we sent OVER $3500 TO OUR CHASE CARD this month (WOO HOO!), that victory is still slightly clouded by the fact that it probably could have been closer to $4K had we been more careful with our eating habits.

Sigh.

However, another good point to make - Chip was on orders for the National Guard two extra days this month.  We won't make any money in as take home pay seeing that we had to pay a babysitter those days which we were both at work, but it will automatically withdraw the extra amount to apply to our Army loan.  That should knock it down about another $200.  I'll take all I can get!

Additionally, we closed on our mortgage refinance.  So we have taken on slightly more debt (since there were closing costs that got rolled into the mortgage, our mortgage principle is now higher than it was last week), but at a lower rate. And it will take us about 18 months to save enough to pay for the closing costs.  Not too bad.

Why am I telling you this again?  Well, because of the refi, we will skip April's mortgage payment and that amount we previously were paying toward our mortgage ($1615) will go to our Chase card as well.  Booyah!  Another blow for the debt in April!

And lastly, we will once again have a mortgage payment.  We will also have the addition $250 that we are saving due to the refinance to send to Chase on top of our normal payment. What else will we have in May?  A three paycheck month which means another chunk (maybe $1800-$2000) to Chase. 

That's over $7000 to Chase in three months!  It should be down to right around a $5000 balance then. 

The original balance of this credit card was over $17,000.  That hurts to say, but it was.  And now, we are moving full speed ahead and I am LOVING it!  Soon we will be done with this card altogether!