financial peace

It was almost exactly two years ago when Randy and I took our first Financial Peace University class. We entered into that room as a hopeless married couple who was $82,000 in debt {and that number doesn’t even include our mortgage!}. Two years later, we have paid off almost half of those awful student loans.

Click here to see our new balance.

I was so so hoping that this would have been the month we hit the halfway mark, but we didn’t quite make it. We should, hopefully, get to that point next month. I’m still proud to say that we were able to pay off $2,637 in September.

Here is what we did this month to go above and beyond our regular payments:

I had an above average month in profits from selling Bondbons {if you placed an order, thank you!}
I supervised a detention on Saturday morning {no, it’s not like the Breakfast Club}
Randy did a few side jobs of auto and house repair
Our gas bill was $60 less than usual {every little bit helps}
We {kind of} refinanced on our house {it’s a long story . . .}, and we were able to use money we did not have to pay for the month and apply it to the debt
There are several other odd jobs we did {such as line judging, teaching cake pop classes supervising the ACT, and being a home bound teacher}, but we haven’t been paid for them yet. An update on those next month.

My sweet husband has worked like a dog this month, but unfortunately his construction business has not been profitable for us due to many factors out of his control. Luckily he has a steady income with teaching and the construction is just supplemental. This has obviously been quite frustrating to us, but I have faith that October will be a better month.

I want to mention that if we just worked our teaching jobs, we would be able to pay off about $1,000 a month. That’s not good enough. To pay our debt off faster, we have to do some major overtime. We have to be intentional. We have to cut a lot of luxuries out of our life. We have to watch every penny.

I don’t share what we do and how we pay extra to brag. I share this each month to show the masses that this is possible. Hopefully this is an encouragement and inspiration. If you look for opportunities, are willing to work, and live below your means, you will be surprised at what you’re able to accomplish. Between teaching full time, being a mom, a wife, a small business owner, a volunteer, and working extra jobs, I get about 5 hours of sleep a night.

I love my sleep, but right now, I love seeing the balance of our debt go down more.

Stay tuned for our next update on November 1st.

Love,

August is hard, friends.

That’s when school starts back up, and since everyone in our house is either a teacher or a student, August means we have to readjust to a life of packing lunches, lesson plans, homework, carpooling, grading, learning new names, and actually showering on a regular basis (I speak the truth, people). All that sucks up a majority of our time, which doesn’t allow for much money-making to throw at our debt (or for me to blog, which is why it’s been awhile, sorry).

Our required minimum payment for the student loans is $400/month. With what we budget, we typically pay down at least $1,000/month. In the midst of going back to school, this month we were still able to pay off:

$2,541.

You can check out our current balance here.

Not bad. I will be honest, though. Even though that is a lot, it’s hard to see those numbers compared to last month. Those numbers are also not going to get us to our goal to be debt free by January 1, 2017. That means we’re going to have to kill it going forward.

Here is what we did in August to pay down our debt:

I made a decent profit through my Bondbons business.
My husband put in many hours with his Promise Painting and Contracting Business.
I was paid for a few cake pop classes I taught at Sweet! in July.
We discovered an issue with our home security system and received a credit.
I was paid for working on a curriculum committee through my school district over the summer.
We budgeted earlier in the summer to visit my parents in Ohio. We ended up spending way less than what we allotted, so the leftover money went toward the debt.

I also wanted to touch on our compound interest. It’s the devil when it’s working against you. When we got serious about paying off our student loans nearly two years ago, we were paying $10.93 just in interest PER DAY. Today, our daily interest is $6.61. In two years that is a difference of:

$4.30 PER DAY

$129.60 PER MONTH

$1,576.80 PER YEAR

I delight in the fact that less and less of our hard-earned money is going toward interest and more and more is paying down that principal.

Stay tuned for our next update on October 1st.

Love,