2009 Debt Goals – Report Card

We made it through the first year of our debt and clutter free journey.  I know we have been somewhat absent from this blog and we also suffered quite a bit of data loss when our host deleted all our posts. However, these setbacks did not deter us from our goals and progress.

Although embarking on this new lifestyle was not without its frustrations, it didn’t take us long to find our groove and have a debt and clutter free focus.

Here were our 2009 goals:

1. Do NOT charge anything on credit or loan money to anyone.
2. Create a budget and stick to it!
3. Have a budget meeting twice monthly.
4. Reduce total credit card debt by $30K.
5. Put all supplemental income towards paying off debt.

Now to evaluate how close we came to achieving those goals…

1. Although we did not charge any new debt onto an existing credit card nor loan anyone money, we did decide in July to purchase a new hybrid car, thus acquiring a new car loan.  I would love to say we accomplished this goal, but the car loan did end up putting us further into debt.  On the plus side, not only did we not loan any money, we actually managed to recover all money borrowed from us. C
2. We created a budget and very successfully stuck to it.  I was very apprehensive about the whole budget thing in the beginning, but now I actually look forward to our budget meetings.  It is great to continue to see how well we are doing and these meetings tend to be a positive emotional boost! A+
3. For 2009, we averaged at least two budget meetings per month, usually one per week.  :) A+
4. At the end of December 2008, we had $82,314 in debt.  I am very proud of how well we did in 2009 in reducing our credit card debt.  We paid off a total of $48,128  toward debt repayment.  However, we added $25k to our debt with the new car.  Therefore, our total debt amount at the end of 2009 was $62,407 .  So unfortunately, I would say we failed this goal even though we paid more than $30K towards debt, our total debt only went down almost $20k.  Steve says we accomplished this goal because we did lower our CREDIT CARD debt by more than $30K, and that our car loan is secured debt vs unsecured debt. B-
5. 90% of our supplemental income went directly towards debt repayment.  I know we said “all” supplemental income, but 90% is pretty darn close.  :) A-

All in all, it was a very positive year for us. I would say a B+.  We honestly accomplished a lot more than we thought possible, and we didn’t kill each other in the process.  I look forward to posting our debt goals for 2010 very soon.