Renting a car and we're using the baby efund!

I have officially closed my credit card!! I got the confirmation letter in the mail the other day, and it is a DONE DEAL! Now we have NO credit cards to even tempt us!!!!

A funny story, Phil's company reserved a rental car for us to use while in Florida, and since neither of us is 25, we called to make sure it would be ok. Turns out for this company... Payless... that you HAVE to have a credit card to rent a car if you are under 25. A debit card (with the VISA or whatever symbol on it) won't cut it. Thankfully, they got it transferred over to a company that will let us (Enterprise). Stupid rental car companies!

If you haven't been keeping up with my other blog, we're moving to Florida this weekend... so its a good thing that we have that baby e-fund. It all came so quickly. We went down there the 21st to 23rd, and then they said, this weekend would be great (beginning of May)!

So, we're going to empty out the baby e-fund, use what money we haven't paid towards our snowball the past few months, and we're going to have to use what we've stored in a few envelopes, ie: pets, charitable gifts (we have no church here), gifts, etc. I'm keeping track to whats in each of them, and we're planning on filling them back up to what they were once we get the tax return. Phil's company is also giving him $1k to start, and will reimburse the other expenses afterward. I'm sure that we'll have some of this money left over, but its good to know that its there just in case.

Unfortunately, the branch Phil will be working at doesn't travel as much, and they use the company trucks, so we're not going to have any more big expense checks.

After our move, I'm seriously considering finding a part-time job (if I can find one!). I'd probably do it for 6 months, then reevaluate for another 6 months and go from there. I feel that would help a lot in our snowball. I CANT wait to get that done!

Town Hall for Hope

If you haven't already heard, Dave Ramsey is doing a "talk/question-answer session" called Town Hall for Hope. I highly recommend you to check it out and get some hope for this economy!! I can't wait!!! I know it'll be really inspiring and hopeful. Many churches all around the country are hosting it, and I've even noticed that some have free childcare (and of course the event is free), so no excuses, go listen and watch, and get some HOPE!

For more information or to find a location near you, visit http://www.townhallforhope.com/

Oh and its April 23, 2009 and 8 p.m. Eastern with a west coast delay at 7pm PT.

A few random thoughts...

So, if we don't have to spend any money moving (fingers crossed), or can just pull it out of our budget, then we'll have $5649.44 to put towards our debt snowball (we just learned how much we're getting back in our tax return, yay!) That number is from what we have now and our tax return.

So, we've been playing with how to use it. We could pay off Phil's last student loan, the hospital bill, and half of my lowest student loan... or we could pay off ALMOST all of the credit card with $591.64 left on it. Plus, its at 15.99% interest, which would save a lot of money because of interest over time. Either way, it would put the same amount of money to roll into our debt snowball, $155 (credit card) or $50 Phil's student loan plus $100 hospital bill. Then of course, the CC would be our lowest debt, and we'd hopefully be able to knock it out in one month, and knock out the other two pretty quickly.

Any thoughts are always appreciated and welcome.

Debt Free Date!!

Oh and I forgot to share, but my friend Katie gave me a link to this really cool debt snowball calculator.

If we stay at the rate we're at, minimums plus just under $300/month extra, we'll have everything paid off by December 2012. That seems like FOREVER away!!

Hopefully, we'll step it up a notch. If we paid an extra $1000/month we'd be debt free by February 2011, or if we did it in order of interest (not smallest to largest), it'd be January 2011. But, we're going to stick to the plan, smallest to largest.

And say we get a $10k bonus? And paid an extra $1000/month, we'd be debt free by July 2010. Now where can I find that extra $10k??

Oh and here's the link for anyone interested:

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx?country=us

So, I think I'll make our official debt snowball date July 2011. That's us paying an extra $700/month and in order from smallest to biggest. It also doesn't include any other extra random money.

So, 27 months (hopefully shorter)! WE CAN DO IT!!

Debts Update

So, for a little motivation, I need to update my Debt Snowball list...

$1048.51 Phil's student loan, $50/month, 4.210% interest
$2816.46 Hospital Bill, $100/month, 0% interest
$3575.29 Anna's MST student loan, $40/month, 5% interest
$5358.95 Anna's DIRECT student loan, $63.30/month, 6.8% interest
$6241.08 Credit Card, $155/month, 15.99% interest
$11403.37 Anna's MOHELA student loan, $131.18, 6.8% interest (they 'considilated' it so two are at that and the other is at 4.2% interest or something).

Grand Total: $30443.66

I hope that next month we'll be below $30k!!! Since we put a hold on the debt snowball though, I think it'll be another month. Then we'll never again be over $30k (except when we buy a house because the 100% down plan just isn't gonna work for us).

I wish we didn't have to put this snowball on hold, but after the move (assuming we do), everything left over will be put on the snowball. And, that should be something because we're going to get our tax refund. I'm a little behind on taxes. I send them to the accountant tomorrow morning (got them all done today), and we are expecting around $2k.

Now if only Phil would get a $10k bonus or something for this project he's on. Then we'd be below $20k!!

I hate debt :(