Another month down!

So May has almost gone…..and so is my truck payment!!

Since we started on the Financial Peace plan 8 months ago, my wife  and I have paid down a boat load of debt. This includes about $5100 on a used 1999 Dodge Ram pickup. June should be the last month we make a payment to the bank for it and then it is ours…..16 months early on a 36 month loan! It’s been a struggle at times but now that I see the light at the end of that particular tunnel I feel super-charged!

I said we’ve paid a boat-load of debt. The reality is that we’ve paid off only about a life raft of our current Titanic debt. We are doing well but we still of a LONG way to go. Mostly in Student loans but that is worth another post in itself.

My eyes are focused on our new target: 2006 Kia Rio. This car has been very good for us but there is so much wrong with how we got it:

      First, I had to drive my 1978 Datsun station wagon 90 minutes to get it to the Kia dealership. Why? Because that is the place where my parents got theirs. Why does that matter?

     Second, my stepfather had to co-sign the loan because my credit was/still is so torn up I’m amazed I’m still on the grid.

     Third, I don’t remember the exact interest on this vehicle but let’s do a little math. We financed the full price of the car since I had no down payment: $15100. We are making $386 payments. It is a 72 month loan. That means we will have to pay $27792 on a Kia Rio. That is $12692 dollar more than the over-priced sticker of the car! Sick yet? I am. If I’ve done my math right, that is about a 23% annual interest rate. HOLY CRAP!!!

Well, can’t change the past but I can certainly affect the future here. Rolling our truck payment snow into our Kia payment plus the extra we have been paying will have us out of that Kia payment in 9 more months. That will be 18 months early on that loan too. We will have saved about $600 in interest which is good. It is just too bad that the stupid tax on that car is still worth a brand new sports car that I do not own!

I’ve got a couple more posts in the work. One detailing exactly how much debt we have paid so far and another about some great ideas I am working on to generate some extra income in my “spare time.”

Music Man

An Empty Envelope?

So with a new month comes refilled envelopes.

Now here I sit, 10 days into April, with an empty restaurant envelope. I even increased the amount this month but I have 20 more days of nothing there. I know I am going to be making an huge extra truck payment at the end of the month and I keep fighting the urge to reshuffle my budget to “find” some restaurant money.

I know I shouldn’t (and I probably won’t) but it is a real-life struggle.

Any words of inspiration would be welcome.

Music Man

It’s been way too long!

In case anyone is still reading this, I have been away from the blog for way too long. So much has happened that I don’t even know where to start. Maybe the biggest event is the best place.

I received a letter from the church I worked for on December 29 stating that, as of January 1st, my services as youth Outreach Director would no longer be required. I’ll save that for another rant

I applied for, and got, a job as a Driver Instructor. A couple weeks later I was offered a job as a bus driver for mentally handicapped adults. I am currently working both jobs. I don’t make quite as much as I was making but you’ll see that with the right system in place that doesn’t matter much.

At the same time as I was let go my wife also quit working as that church’s music director because she felt that I was treated very badly at the end….I agree…but again that for another time.

So let us do some math: she made a net of just under $600 a month (highly under the going rate in our area for that position) and I made just under $1700 a month. That’s a $2300 drop in income with absolutely no warning. She also works full-time as a teacher. She’s only been at that for 5 years so her salary in nowhere near the top of the scale

We had already completed baby step one of $1000 in the bank and were slowly slicing off debt. You see, in our particular situation, we didn’t really have any snow to get that ball rolling. What I mean is we had a LOT of debts we just didn’t pay on at all. In order for us to get some traction we needed to pay off something we actually WERE paying on. That left us with few options: The Kia, the Dodge, and the rent-a-center washer and dryer! Can you say suckers?!?!?

I’ll shorten this a bit: Our truck payment is $250 a month. Since being let go in January and finding new employment for much lower pay we have still been able to pay off an extra $1212 on top of our regular payments.  We were also able to get rid of our Rent-a-Center payment. That’s a lot of pluggin away.

In the midst of all this my mother and my nephew have come live with my wife and I and bring along alot of baggage but not a whole lot in the way of money. We also got a letter from the state “reminding” us that we owed them nearly $400 and we had to pay it in the next 60 days or else!!! lol

So saved 2 months and payed them off….along with the extra truck payments. If you count in the $90 per month on rent-a-center we payed since January and our Kia payments, the total debt we have paid off in the first quarter of 2010 is like this:

Rent-a-Center:  $270 (no more payments to them ever again!!!)

Truck:                   $1938 (truck is now under $2000)

Kia:                         $1200 (urg! this is the next beast we tackle!)

State Tax:            $387 (I’d like to know where this money goes lol)

Total:                    $3795 (and I didnt take a paycheck until almost FEBRUARY!!)

We;ve also been able to save a little more along the way. It looks like my wife may start working for another church come this summer and there are even chirpings that they might need a youth director

What is the point of this blog? To show off? No. Am I proud of what we have accomplished this year. Yes, but there is still ALOT of work to be done. The point of this blog today is to say tht even when you get beat down emotionally and finacially you can make it through. You can walk through the fire with nothing more than a pleasant sun tan….IF YOU HAVE A PLAN!!!! Get Financial Peace University. Listen to what Dave Ramsey has to say. Apply the teaching and you’ll never look back except to say “I can’t believe I used to think that way!”

Music Man