💸 The Debt Diaries: August 2017
Welcome to my second round of The Debt Diaries! Today, I’ll be updating on our progress over the last month with our credit cards and loans. This is the progress we’ve made since my last post on August 7th, so exactly one month’s worth of progress. I will check in again in another month! Let’s get started!
💳 Debt Overview
Visa Credit Card
Starting Balance: $5,588.33
Payments: –$155.00
Interest: +$52.61
Ending Balance: $5,485.94
Debt Reduced: –$102.39
PayPal Credit Card
Starting Balance: $4,247.00
Payments: –$41.20
Interest: +$9.68
Ending Balance: $4,215.48
Debt Reduced: –$31.52
Personal Loan (from parents)
Starting Balance: $110.00
Payments: –$40.00
Interest: +$0.00
Ending Balance: $70.00
Debt Reduced: –$40.00
Personal Loan (from bank - for funeral expenses)
Starting Balance: $1,000.00
Payments: –$100.00
Interest: +$11.21
Ending Balance: $911.21
Debt Reduced: –$88.79
📊 Grand Total Snapshot
Current Total: $10,682.63
Overall Debt Reduced: –$262.70
💸 Where the Payments Went
Total Paid: $336.20
Went to Interest: $73.50
Went to Principal (Actual Debt Reduction): $262.70
This means 78.1% of payments went toward reducing the actual balance.
✅ Wins This Month
- No credit card usage!
- Contributing to sinking funds again.
- OT money.
⚠️ What I Struggled With
- Went a bit off track later in the month.
💠Real Talk
This was an okay month. I did pretty good cutting out my needless spending for the first couple of weeks, but went a bit off track the last couple of weeks. I caught some good sales at Bath & Body Works and bought more candles and soaps than I needed. On the plus side, I did NOT use my credit cards at all which is great! Additionally, I started contributing to my “Dakota/Vet” sinking fund again throughout the month for his annual visit last week. I was able to pay for it in full without dipping into our savings account OR using credit cards.
Even though I didn’t pay as much debt as I would have liked, we had those small wins this month. Jerry also worked a lot of OT so he could make some progress on his debts. He put a lot of that OT money onto his Amazon card (not featured here), some into our savings for his upcoming car repair, and then the $100 payment on the bank loan up above that was used for his trip to CA for his dad’s funeral.
I’m thinking of including our savings account and sinking fund accounts here in the future so we can share how we’re progressing with those financial goals as well. Thoughts? As I mentioned in my first Debt Diaries, our main focus right now is on paying the debt off, with growing those accounts being secondary goals. Even though they aren’t my first financial priority, they are important and I’m working on them slowly but surely.
Catch you in next month’s round-up. Until then — stay scrappy, stay focused, and keep moving those numbers in the right direction.
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