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Monday, August 4, 2008

July Finance Review: The Month That Was



The smell of firecrackers are gone, and the first whiffs of "Back to School" are in the air. The month that was is, is was and will be is now! (say that 3 times fast!). Great month even with the Evil Ninja fair popping up and spending too much there, we still did pretty darn well with an increase of $2, 093 to our Net Worth!

Highlights:

  • Lowered a few Bills - Made an effort to kill a bunch of these $5-10 nagging monthly charges from various accounts. A few more to go, but we also killed a few bigger quarterly ones as well. This will save us over $1000 a yr!
  • Net Worth up by $2,093 - Still mostly debt reduction, but better to kill a 12.99% credit card debt than earn 3% in a savings account!
  • Reached the 1/3rd pay off point in our consumer debt! (OK 32.73%...close enough to celebrate!) Original number: $68,897.23 - Now: $46,344.81 - Paid off since 10/07: $22,522.42

Points to Work on:

  • Property Taxes Coming in October - Need to step up savings if not gonna touch Emergency Fund. $3,040 in ETrade Account right now for it, probably need another $1500!
  • Weekly updates op MS Money and Excel charts - Daily too much bi-weekly to long. Today took 2hrs to get everything to my love OCD-esque level.
  • All of us to pull reins in tighter when envelopes are empty...No more robiing Paul to pay Peter!

Goals:

  • Pay Off StateFarm CC - $2836 - Down to $1920! #1 Snowball debt getting payments of $280!
  • Pay Off Car - $4594.87 - Down to $2474, Coming down quick!
  • Pay Off CC CitiBank Platinum - $8989 - Now $8345 This is still getting Minimum payment as we snowball the State Farm Card
  • Pay off all CC Debt - Paid off $1600 since beginning of tracking
  • Save 100% 2008 Property Taxes - $4500 - $3040 Saved in E*Trade Account. Back to working this amount. Whatever not achieved will come out of Emergency fund, but would rather not tap it.
  • Keep Snowball 100% Intact - $308.43 Is the Current. Once StateFarm is paid off, it will be $654.72!
  • No CC Use - For the TENTH month! Getting close to the 1-year mark! 60 more Days!
  • Increase Average FICO-Score to 720- Without CC payoff not gonna happen this year, but still getting better. Now average 7001.7 over the three agencies!
  • Stick to Cash Budget System - Yep!
  • Net Worth increased by $20,000 - $12,000 so far!

Baby Steps:

  • Baby Step #2 - As stated above, now at nearly 1/3rd paid off!

That's it!

10 Comments:

Canadian Saver said...

You had a great month of July! Congratulations on reaching that milestone in your debt repayment schedule!!

Sharon said...

Racerx,
This is AWESOME!! All positives for sure!

Noel Larson said...

Well..I just notices I need to update NewWorth...doh!

@Canadian Saver - Thanks for the encouragemenet and kind words!

@Sharon - Graci! I have that big bill loom in Oct w/Property taxes, but other then that...gotta fight off the Ninjas!

Sharon said...

RacerX,
What bills were you able to lower?

Anonymous said...

Terrific progress! The concept that killing off debt= improvement in net worth is right on.

So true that putting off posting to Quicken (in my case) and Excel longer than about a week results in a two-hour slog. About once a week seems to keep it under control.

Noel Larson said...

@Sharon - I had a couple bills like a Wine Membership that sent stuff out quarterly. A few magazines no one really reads (but no one could understand why I killed them!) and a couple things for the blog. I also cut down the level of pkg on our Direct TV.

@Funny - Once a week makes sense, just will getting paid every two weeks, I probably won't have anything to pay. It is about breaking the "need to pay cycle"

Anonymous said...

congrats! i am in the homestretch for debt repayment. yay!

Anonymous said...

nice! you are really rolling! by the way, you have this ad that pops up that won't go away! it blocks some of the site. :(

Unknown said...

Debt is a huge problem for everyone. But if you will repay your debt that will be great. But we will face some problem while we will deal with the creditors. For that reason debt consolidation i think very helpful. Because it will help you how to deal with the creditors apart from this how you can get maximum discounts from the creditors.
congratulations for your work & thanks for share it too.

Unknown said...

Even if we think about Grants the situation has become too tough for us to avail the same. In the situation where government is considering a bailout what else can we expect. The finances are in a stranglehold and no one knows how long this is going to continue.

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