Slow down for a month (or two)
July 10, 2012 at 2:56 pm (paying debt)
Decided to take a little intermission for the next month or two and catch up on my debt and savings plans. I’ve been running pretty close to the edge the last few months. I get greedy to pay down my debt, pay a lot a bit too early, and by the end of the month have to borrow a bit from savings or put some expenses on my credit card. Of course, I always want to pay these back and off immediately so there’s never any finance fees, but it does derail the following month a bit and I use money earmarked for debt to pay off my credit card or pay back my “temporary loan.” This then also skews my budget on the dates I pay for things.
I decided that this month I will scale back my debt payments, consolidate, pay off, top up, and the like. What that means is that I’ve reduced my autopayments to my debt to $300 for the month (down from $650). I’m going to see where I am at the end of the month, and pay that towards my road bike loan, the GE Capital. I want that close to paid off by the end of the month. Next month I’ll then be free and clear. I hate having that 0% credit reduce my regular-debt-paying momentum.
Of course, I always seem to forget that I have to pay an annual web hosting fee for my main real-life photography website, and I also get whammed with my SBA annual fee, both of which are $150, both of which occur in July. So here’s the score for this month:
July SBA debt payments: $300 ($200 on the 1st paycheck, $100 on the 2nd)
Road Bike loan: $200 ($500 left to pay)
Car Loan: $253.11 (minimum payment)
Web Hosting: $150
It makes me sad that I can’t pay $600 towards my SBA loan. I feel like I’m treading water this month. Next month I’ll be able to pay off my road bike fully, and that will bring me back to normal for September – I’ll be back in fighting debt trim.
Oh, and I updated my stats on the right. I used up a lot of my car fun to get a bunch of work done, oil change, some engine work, and of course the timing belt. Totaled about $900 in 2 visits. Now that that major repair is over and done with, I’m gonig to scale back my car fun savings to $100/month for a while (down from the $150-$200 I had been socking away).
debtmaven out
DebtMaven 