Belated Update

I intended to post yesterday, but I was just busy with work and life.  So the good news is that my divorce was finalized yesterday!  Lucky for me this was an amicable break-up and I learned a few lessons regarding marriage and finance and I will touch upon that in a later post.

Back to business, here is the list of the debt in collections that I currently owe:

I also owe 2,600.00 towards the car loan, $647 towards AMEX so that is a total of $10,211.00 for all the known debt.  I have already paid the first two and next pay period I am going to pay the Comcast bill off as well.  I would have paid the NJNG bill as well, however my car needs to be repaired so that will be about $600.

The car is becoming a major money pit for me, so I have decided that after I repair it next weekend, I will no longer be putting anymore money in it for repairs.  I will start saving money every month towards a used vehicle, but there really is no rush.  I started using Simple Bank and I love the fact you can create a financial goal and it will "stash" the money away for you.  Everyone should check this out.  I just started using this bank back in November and I what I find the most helpful is that for every transaction that you make you will get an alert on your phone if you use the app.  For me this has been very helpful in curbing my idle spending and I have become more mindful of what I actually want to spend my money on.  Well anyways check it out, it is really is simple to use and navigate.

So my primary goal for this year is to pay all that debt off.  Considering what I bring monthly in and the bills I actually have, I know this is a viable plan.  Currently I have an excess of $2,000 a month that can go towards savings and paying bills off.

Until the next time

Financial Slacker Chic out....

Debt-Free Days

In One Year I have accumulated 15,000.00 in debt; to some people it’s "nothing"; but to me it's a lot considering the only debt I had before was $300.00. Granted most of the debt about 12,000.00 is due to financing a car last December; however I could have just as easily saved up and bought a used car outright. Now I am trapped with car payments every month. The rest of the debt is credit card debt and I am determined to have 3,000.00 paid off in six months.

I became nostalgic this morning and remembered when I had 600.00 extra every month; I could go buy a new pair of shoes for myself if I wanted, or give my daughter an extra 5.00 in her “paycheck: for performing above and beyond her home duties. **SIGHS** Those were my care-free, debt-free days. Of course I also realized that that extra money came and went on frivolous things such as buying things that I did not need, but wanted and eating out. I have learned from my poor past financial choices and instead of dwelling on what could haves; I have moved on to make life better for me and my little one.

Although I cannot change what happened, I know that once the credit card debt is repaid, I will throw those combined payments towards the car to get that “monkey”After much reading and research (first step), from Suze Orman to Dave Ramsey, I have decided to use Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball Plan. With the Debt Snowball Plan, I will start off with paying each debt with the minimum payment, but will throw whatever extra cash I can scrimp together each month towards the smallest debt until that I paid off. Then when that debt is paid off, I will then use that minimum payment plus the extra cash and use that towards the next debt, and will continue with this cycle until the debts are paid off.

To demonstrate how serious I am about my debt reduction plan, the list of my debts, smallest to largest will be displayed here and updated every month.

Here is the listing of my debts after they have been paid on for the month of October:

Creditor Balance
Store Card 1 $ 142.08
Visa 1 $ 230.35
Store Card 2 $ 262.14
Visa 3 $ 288.44
MC 1 $ 319.37
Store Card 3 $ 493.38
Visa 2 $ 701.54 $
MC 2 $738.36
AUTO $ 11,981.96

Thanks for reading and I will keep on posting updates!