I am so proud to announce that we owe less than $9,000 on the student loan! Lately, every little extra “snowflake” money I get, I am putting towards this. It feels good to be under a “monumental” number, like the thousands. I am debating whether or not to put some of the stimulus money towards it. I am also expecting my quarterly bonus on the 15th of next month, so I may put that towards it too. At least some of it!

It feels really good to be making progress on paying off this debt. I’ve been worried more about saving lately, and a lot of our extra money has been going right into savings. I think tonight I’m going to sit down and create the sub accounts with ING that I’ve been meaning to. I am not a spreadsheet person! I like to have it all visualized for me. Once I get that done, I’ll have a better idea of how much money I have allotted for each fund, and then go from there. I think it will work better for me.

Only $8800 left!

Posted under My Debt Reduction, Student Loans

I am slowly but surely making a dent in my student loan debt. With the way the economy is, I’ve been trying to put as much money into savings that I can while paying off this debt. I’m not in too big of a hurry to pay this off because of the ultra low interest rate I am paying on it. This is the only other debt we have besides this loan is our mortgages. I’m not in too big of a hurry to pay those off right now.

I’ve decided that for our next vehicle purchase, we’re going to pay cash. I understand that we may not be driving the newest, hippest cars out there, but we’re going to have a car that gets us from point A to point B. Back when the tree fell on our house in January, I was able to get a 1994 Oldsmobile Achieva from my very gracious aunt. I have been so thankful for that car! It may not be the best looking, but it does the job and I love it. We can afford a car payment, but my thinking is if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

I want to have enough money saved up that in the event I am able to stay at home with our children. With me not bringing in a stable income from the bank, I’d like to know that we’ve got an emergency fund to cover everyday living expenses in the event something horrible happened. Let’s just say that I lost my job (knock on wood); I’d rather have the money that I normally would be putting toward debt reduction to be able to make the monthly payments on those loans and be able to pay living expenses rather than have less principal on the loan. That’s just my thinking.

Maybe once the economy gets better I’ll start being more aggressive in paying off our debts. Right now, this is working for us, so I’m going to continue to do what we’re doing. Of course I’m going to keep trying to make as much money as I can online by the different avenues I’ve discovered, and I’ll be putting that into savings.

Do you think I am doing the right thing by saving instead of paying off debt in this case? 

Posted under My Debt Reduction, Student Loans

I haven’t updated the status of my debt reduction lately. I think that’s partly because I feel guilty that I haven’t made that much of a dent in it. I’ve decided that with all the talk about having a baby, gas prices skyrocketing, and the unstable economy that I’m going to be throwing every extra “snowflake money” into our savings account.

I go back and forth between paying off debt and saving money. I’ve got quite a nice chunk of change in our savings account now, but I want to keep building it up in case something happens. I think about paying off our student loan and mortgage early, but then I get worried that we’ll need a new car or something will break or something awful will happen and then I decide to just put the money in savings.

It’s almost an obsession, which I’m sure it can be for a lot of people. “Should I pay off debt, or save money?” is one of the most prevalent, if not number one, question among smart savers these days.  In our situation, it’s a toss up, I think.  Our loans are at good interest rates (nothing more than 6.89%), and I think that if we need to get a loan in the future there’s a possibility that the interest rates may be much higher than they are now.  If I save enough money, I won’t need to borrow any.

Any way I look at it, I’m still paying off debt and saving money at the same time, so it’s a win-win situation. Maybe when things start looking up I’ll put more money towards paying off debt faster.  But for now, the peace of mind of having that savings account have a larger balance outweighs any other doubts I may have.   And that’s all that matters.

Posted under My Debt Reduction