So it looks like we’re in collapse and people are killing each other in the streets. Oh, wait, no, not really.

Sure, the markets are having a fit, which makes it painful to look at our retirement accounts. Except that we aren’t planning on touching them for many years, so eh. Feel a little bad for the baby boomers inching up on retirement, but really, not much. Yes, I know that schadenfreude isn’t exactly a positive emotion or anything, but many of them have defined their lives by excess so they shouldn’t be surprised when it comes around to bite ‘em. A little frugality isn’t perhaps a terrible thing.

photo credit: missdesigndiva

Meanwhile our politicians are tripping over themselves trying to do, well, I don’t really know. Looks like they are hellbent on trying to find a way to spend my son’s future income in an effort to stave off what will be an admittedly painful correction. Personally, being a free market kind of guy, I say go ahead and let it correct. But I am probably missing the big picture.

That said, at least in our household, things are certainly not flying off track. In fact, despite the supposed tightening of the credit market, we just received notice that one of our credit cards has substantially increased it’s limit. Thanks, but we really don’t need it. We won’t mention that to the government, because they may just decide they need that as well!

We did a decent job of killing off more debt this month. Broke well past the $1000 mark. And honestly are still living quite comfortably even with that kind of progress. We could probably introduce a little more pain and get the ball rolling a little faster. But that’s a budgeting issue, not a reporting one.

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently with my side business, and it’s beginning to really take off. Right now it is not adding any to our debt attack plan, as I am stockpiling cash right now in anticipation of further expansion. The holidays are rapidly approaching, and I have a feeling I’ll be spending a fair amount on advertising soon!

Oh, and oops, I will take a cue from Wall Street and restate some debt. I misread a medical bill statement and understated that debt by around $800. Where’s my bailout?

photo credit: ToniVC

Summer has finally made itself fully known, and walking outside is like walking into a sauna. Which is fine if I wanted a sauna, but not so fine if I just wanted to go for a walk. So, what better time to break out ye’ olde spreadsheet and see what kind of progress was made in killing off debt last month?

Summer always seem to be a little more expensive for us than other times of the year. After all, when it’s snowing and 7 degrees, we are perfectly content not wandering much and just staying warm inside here at home.

But it being a beautiful summer, we felt like wandering a bit. We made our annual pilgrimage to my extended family reunion, and decided to take a couple extra days to see my wife’s brother nearby while we were in the area. We did do a budget for the vacation, but it being one of those things we didn’t regularly budget for in the past (otherwise known as everything), we didn’t end up budgeting enough. A couple extra meals out, a few too many trips to the coffee shop, some random spending, and the bottom line showed us a couple hundred overspent.

I was a little disappointed, but wasn’t extraordinarily bothered by it. My wife? Borderline stroke. I had no idea how deeply the get-out-of-debt bug I brought home had bitten her! A few serious conversations about our goals and progress and such, and she relaxed a bit while also imbuing in me a little extra motivation to kick a few things into higher gear…

photo credit: Daveybot

Spring ends, summer begins, more debt goes to the great beyond. Isn’t it a wonderful thing?

Yet another month of incremental debt killing. While I could have boosted the damage done to the final tally a bit by using returns from my expanding online marketing side business, right now I’m comfortable using the funds to reinvest in what’s been working. Maybe next month I’ll throw the excess at the debt, but for now having the ability to use the play I have in that side business’s cash flow to experiment has proven useful.

Likewise, I’m sure we could have trimmed more, but going over our spending versus the budget it looks like we did a little comfort spending in June. In the end, it is just money, and we needed a little cheering up more than we needed to knock a couple hundred more off the total, so c’est la vie. Speaking of, we are still waiting to hear on medical bills associated with our loss. Since we have a pretty substantial deductible, unless medical procedures have gotten cheap all of a sudden, the ol’ total is almost certainly going to suffer a brief reversal soon.

Anyway, for those into specifics, here ya’ go:

photo credit: PhotoA.nl

Despite the ominous sounding headline I threw up there, the financial front of our little family ended the month making decent forward progress. Oh, sure, I would have loved to knock another few thousand a month off that total. And with our little stimulus payment (my apologies future generations!) coming in, I thought we might just have the chance to bite of a bigger chunk.

Some more good news: My little sis did manage to get herself hitched. To a guy I really like. And looked absolutely ecstatic the whole time. And while our gift spending was out of the ordinary monthly range, the wedding was no surprise and we had budgeted for that spending. So it made almost no dent finance-wise. And hey, it’s my little sister. I’m absolutely thrilled that she’s thrilled.

Looking good at knocking off that chunk so far! But alas, Murphy had other ideas. At least he had the good graces to wait to show up until we had a bit of extra coin around.

We’ve been working on growing our little family for several months without luck, until early last month when my wife shared a little good news with me one evening. Several visits to our wonderful doc later, and alas, it was not meant to be this time around. Whether at seven weeks or seven months, irregardless of how great anything else went, this type of loss makes for a rotten month.

Here’s to a better June!

Oh so steadily inching up to that sub-6-figure total…

As always, not as fast as I dream, but a little less than $1,000 really isn’t terrible progress. Slow and steady wins the race.

Barring the unforeseen, the end of the year should show us just at or below that magically $100,000 barrier. Considering that is everything we owe, house and all, I can’t say we are in bad shape at all.

We were all thinking of visiting the stores this weekend to do a bit of carefree Christmas shopping, but a microscopic bit of good ol’ Mother Nature decided to whack my son and myself with nasty head colds instead. (So if I ramble a bit — because I never do that, do I? — blame it on the Sudafed)

Going for an hour or two after work some weeknight just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you live far enough from what you city slickers would call civilization that a healthy chunk of that time would be spent just getting to a store (at least one that doesn’t have a tractor parts section ). So I’m a little disappointed, because even with the chaos that tags along with holiday weekend crowds it is still early enough in the whole holiday rush that they won’t be that crazy out there.

One thing that will be nice irregardless of when we make it out to do our part to boost the economy is that, for the second year in a row, we won’t be going further into debt spreading holiday cheer. Every cent of what we budgeted for Christmas gifts is sitting in a simple little ING Direct savings sub-account waiting patiently to be spent. (Yes, there are online banks that will give us marginally more interest, but at these totals, the simplicity of ING‘s site is worth foregoing that extra 43 cents or so we may have earned over the year.)

And once that chunk o’ change is gone, well, we’re done. And honestly, it should be more than enough, even if it’s a quarter of what it used to be. More stuff just means more clutter, and I’m tending much more to a few simple possessions over massive amounts of short-lived junk these days.

The time we get to spend with those we care about is worth more than any knick knack we get or give anyway…

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
– Wendell Philip

Much better than last, but still feels a little like we’re only creeping along.

This month shows just shy of 1.2% of the total falling. Plus, it’s looking like we may well be on our way to a sub-$100k total for the new year. A good thing, indeed.

Crazy. Who would have thunk the thought of slightly less than $100,000 owed would please me when I started here with $20k-and-change a short two-and-a-half years ago. But I feel blessed with what I have despite the total, and see light (a ways down there, but light nonetheless) at the end of the tunnel.

Several nibbles on the property we have up for sale, and honestly would entertain the idea of just about any reasonable offer; alas, no takers yet. My little side experiments creeps along, some showing real promise, some just being entertaining diversions.

All in all, life is good… Hope the same can be said for you and yours!

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.
- Henry Wheeler Shaw

It seems that certain months are almost painful in review. September appears to be one:

It certainly felt like we threw a not unsubstantial chunk at the debt, but only gained just over a half percent on the total. Ah, well, progress is progress is progress.

[ed. note:
for those of you infrequently blogging like myself, you should probably occasionally check in on your site. I thought I had set this brief post to published somewhere around the beginning of the month, but apparently only saved it.]

“Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.”
– Frank Zappa

$1,350 and change is another decent bump down on the ol’ debt meter. Yet the hole remains ridiculously deep to me. I know there are plenty out there that are perfectly comfortable with much greater total debt, simply because it’s primarily on their home. But it annoys me to no end to see how we’re paying well over half a thousand a month, solely on interest. Interest. In other words, a wonderful little fee just for the honor of being in debt. I can think of an almost infinite number of things I’d rather do with $500+ than send it to the bank coffers.

Looking at the totals right now, I’m thinking it’s time to really get extremely aggressive about unloading our other property to get our total down. I’m really itching for some serious progress…

Another month, another peek at the ol’ SotD.

July continued June’s slow but steady progress. A bit more progress would have been realized, but a short vacation to attend a family reunion was in order, which cause us to really blow the ‘Crap Food‘ budget category, and end up a bit over on the ‘Gas‘ as well. Excuses excuses…

At this pace, everything will be paid off somewhere around mid-January, 2016. Absolutely ridiculous. 8+ years to get rid of this balance is untenable. Mind you, before then our other property will be long since sold, which will knock off a hefty chunk of that total. But there hasn’t been a heck of a lot of true interest in it so far this summer, so who really knows when that will be! Still, we’re looking at a more than a couple years before it’s gone. Too long for my tastes!

So, to paraphrase Dave, a bigger shovel is in order. A few things are in the fire, but substantial returns are still eluding me. For now. More on that later…