Irregular Payments

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photo credit: fotograf1v2

Glancing at the calendar, I notice that almost half of the month has disappeared in a pile of other people’s tax documents. The brain is just a little crispy right now…

Which is not to say that little has gotten done with our debt destruction progress. Actually, all of a sudden our future debt reports have gotten incredible simple. Not that they were all that complicated to begin with, but by the end of this month, the report would consist of a single line containing our mortgage balance.

That’s right. As of sometime next week, when our medical bill shows up and we write out one more check, we could call up Dave and shout WE’RE DEBT FREE! Well, except for the mortgage, which Dave seems OK with. Which always felt a bit disingenuous to me, when most people’s biggest debt is an oversized mortgage, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

So, how did we kill off $27k+ in a single month? More awesome side job income? Nah. I didn’t tap those funds at all. Just letting those stockpile up for the time being for next year’s tax bill. Instead, we finally got rid of my father’s gift, which covered the loans taken out against it along with leaving a few thousand extra to work with. We plan to kill off the last of our medical and use the rest as an initial boost to a real emergency fund. OK, and we may blow just a bit of it celebrating.

Anyway, enough prattling on. Let’s take a peak at what is probably the final State of the Debt report:

So what’s ahead?

The State of the Debt reports are probably done. Seems a bit boring to report something like ‘Yep, made another mortgage payment.’ I fully intend to accelerate paying that mortgage off as quickly as possible, but a monthly report on that progress? Eh. Maybe in passing I’ll mention milestones, but really, I’ll have to see if I can come up with something a little funner to point out…

Like I alluded to, a real emergency fund, in the neighborhood of six to twelve months of expenses. Haven’t sat down to ponder the exact level, but somewhere in there. Our miniature one has come in handy when stumbling blocks appeared along this path, but having something substantial in place should a more extreme emergency make an appearance definitely would be a good idea. Plus, having that to fall back on gives you freedom to take advantage of opportunities you’d otherwise be hesitant to consider otherwise.

More life simplification. In my free time (in other words, not in the last six weeks or so) I’ve been reading quite a bit on life hacking. Think along the lines of books such as:

• Margin by Swenson
• Your Money or Your Life By Dominguez & Robin
• The 80/20 Principle by Koch
• The Myth of Multitasking by Crenshaw

Like too many people anymore, I spend far too much time doing things that add far too little to my life, and far too little on the things that actually do.

I will be correcting that imbalance.

photo credit: danesparza

As I mentioned in my last post, we accomplished something that I consider absolutely huge — we no longer have any credit card debt. And I’d like to extend my thanks to Chase for being the pricks they are for motivating us to pull as much out of budget in order to kill them off as quickly as we did!

In other financial news, the side business that is becoming my main focus continues yielding gangbuster results. I assumed that after the holidays, things would rapidly slow down on that front. But it looks like January has ever so slightly passed up the incredible December. That said, next month is unlikely to see the same debt killing as this one, as I really need to set aside a pretty healthy chunk for quarterly taxes. I set aside none this month to ensure that we could kill Chase, so I’ve got a little catching up to do.

Anyway, on to some numbers… let me just say right now, 2009 is going to be awesome!

photo credit: Civisi

Hope everyone had a joyous Christmas as well as a safe and wonderful New Years! Most of my free time this month was spent doing as much family stuff as can be squeezed into the ridiculously cold weather December decided to throw at us. But since we live in the Midwest, it’s not as if winter is a surprise or anything…

As I mentioned last time, my efforts at earning a little extra are paying off in a fairly major way. December took November’s successes and handily passed even that success up in a way that boggles my mind. The earnings have slowed down in the last ten days or so, as I expected. But now that I’ve got a taste of the potential out there, I’m hooked, and am excited to get cracking in ‘09!

When my assorted commissions started coming in in mid-December, I must be entirely honest: we blew some of it going ever so slightly overboard with our gift giving. We budget a bit every month for Christmas gifts throughout the year (’cause Christmas isn’t a surprise, you know!), but decided to add a chunk to that total when I saw how things were going. Even though we had it to spare, it still felt a little odd going off budget.

But most of the excess went to doing some heavy damage to our debt. Which was a lot more fun than it sounds like! I decided to check this month’s running total a few days before the end of December, and saw I was a couple hundred dollars short of a big number. So Chase got paid twice this time around. Because when I realized how close we were, I just had to see five figures disappear in a month!

Let the blood letting begin!