The Payoff: July 2012

Another month has come to an end so it’s time to tell you about “The Payoff”.  I only get to do this once a month because Orion and I only get paychecks once a month.

• Starting Debt:                                    $57,796
• Previous Month’s Total Debt:          $57,165
• Current Total Debt:                          $56,585
• Debt Paid Off Since Last Month:   $580
• Overall Paid Off:                                $1,211

We use a debt snowball and we’re paying off the loans in this order (see below) because we tend to think of the five loans with NelNet as one ginormous loan.

Via

You’re probably thinking, “what the heck?  You hardly paid off any debt.  This is a blog about paying off debt, isn’t it?”  You’re not wrong.  We only made minimum debt payments because at the moment and for the next month or two we’re focusing on saving up money to put toward the down payment and closing costs on our first home.  The house is really starting to come together and we’re totally excited.

She’s a brick house.

• Starting House Fund:                        $13,456
• Previous Month’s House Fund:       $17,936
• Current House Fund:                         $19,398
• Total Saved Since Last Month:      $1,462

We’ve surpassed the number our lender estimates we’ll need to cover our down payment and closing costs, but we’re going to continue to pile up money until we’ve actually moved in (in early September).  Once we’re settled in we’ll need some money handy to cover things like a refrigerator, lawn mower and window coverings.  Plus, I’ll have a tuition payment due in a few weeks (we’re paying cash for school this time).  Once we’ve dealt with all of that we’ll start knocking out the debt again.

Between minimum debt payments and the money we moved into savings ($2,024) we used 35% of our take home pay toward meeting our goals.  Not our best month ever, but not bad either.

Stay tuned for the August budget post coming up tomorrow.  I’ll share with you how I boss around all of our dollars.