DebtFREE-Revolution

I’m still playing around with numbers and figures, because last night I realized I made a small mistake on my debt reduction chart (kindly hosted by NCN Network and visible in the sidebar of every page on my blog).  I realized I had the starting figure for the truck note wrong!  On January 1st, 2007, we owed:

• $20,484 on that truck
• the last two and a half months of my car note $512
• a line-of-credit loan from my credit union $509
• Chase Master Card $496
• American Express $1986
• AAFES Star Card $??

When you add the interest into almost all of these, we have paid off this much since the start of this year:

• $9892 on the truck note…only $10,592 left to go!
• $512 to get the title of my car (the Pizza Taxi) free and clear
• $509 to kill off the line-of-credit loan
• $496 to Chase MC, which was still in its 0% introductory period
• $2136 to AmEx, because they charged 18.84% interest AND do double-cycle billing
• $882 to kill off the unknown amount owed to the AAFES Star card

So, for ten full months of doing the Dave Ramsey debt snowball we have paid off $14,427 out of $25,019 owed debt, which is actually 57.7% of the way there!  Although the pretty pie chart in the sidebar says 50.95% I had forgotten to figure the truck note from the beginning of the year, so I need to email NCN and ask him if I can get that changed without too terribly much hassle.

And just in case anyone has any doubt left in their minds, YES I am the nerd of the relationship!  LOL I figure out my miles per gallon with each fill up and add up my tips during the night as I go along, and can figure change in my head also.  Some day I’ll relearn how to do spreadsheets, and hubby will run screaming from the house from all the numbers!

I’ve been tinkering around with our November budget and doing a bit of thinking and planning with our debt snowball (down to just the truck note), and I came to an exciting conclusion about 15 minutes ago:  We can have our truck note down to just FOUR figures in front of the decimal place this month!  This is a HUGE psychological milestone for me!

Seriously, the truck note balance currently sits at $11,436.16 with no payments applied for November.  I figure in the $635 I have authorized to go out to it this afternoon and tomorrow, plus two payments of $350 from hubby (one from each pay period), and that right there will take us to the edge of the “magical” $10K mark.  This is not counting the “snowball” amount I will be tossing at it later this month!

Hubby has been a real trooper during October by simply not spending money.  He’s been busy with his clearing activities anyway, he says, and then he also says he hasn’t been looking at his account balance so he can tell himself he just doesn’t have any money to spend other than $20 a week.  So what he hasn’t been looking at is a checking account balance “left over” from October of approximately $700.  So cool…!  That’s great defense on his end.

I am hoping hubby will agree with my idea of him slapping $500 of that onto the truck note, with $200 moved to savings for future uniform costs since part of that total was his annual clothing allowance from Uncle Sam.

If hubby hits the note on his end, and I can hit it from my end with at least $1000, we will go beyond the milestone down to about $9,000…and it will seem so much more manageable just because there is one digit less in the balance.  Honestly, I don’t understand why it will feel more manageable, I just know it will.

Personally, with winter just around the corner, I think the mental image of a kids’ snowball fight with everyone ganging up on one target just sounds so appropriate for this!  LOL  Let it begin!