Debt Reduction Mar 2009

by Credit Card Debt Consolidator via Flickr

Well, we have survived the first quarter. March was monumental in that we paid off our first credit account!

We were fortunate to get a very nice bonus check from Steve’s employer. I will admit it was extremely tempting to go on a shopping spree after being so frugal for the past few months. In previous years we would not have hesitated to “reward” ourselves with some frivolous expense.

We used most of his check to finish filling up the tile budget category, paying for our daughter’s trip to NYC this summer, and couple of home improvement items. The rest ended up helping balance our budget as our primary income was lower in February (only 4 checks). However, even though we had a weird month budget-wise, we were still able to keep our eye on the bottom line and our feet on the ground.

We reached our $3000 per month towards Debt Repayment goal and paid an extra $1440 to our focus account to finish paying it off! It is very exciting to see the green portion of our pie graph getting bigger each month. Our starting debt total was $82,314 and we have reduced it to $72,808. It is unbelievable that in just 3 months we have paid off almost $10,000 of our debt!

The next highest interest account balance is $23,217 and it is our goal is to have it paid off before Christmas.