February 5, 2008

Well, I only made a payment of $200 toward Leons, which still puts me ahead of my chart but it's not the extra payment I wanted to make. My ex hasn't come through with his payments on the braces but I am hoping to get in touch with him tonight and see what will happen. I'm going to wait until I see before I update my debt chart, just in case I can make another payment this month.

On the other side of my life, my boyfriend is getting his finances in order as well. He also fell into debt after his divorce and is carrying some of that debt at a high interest rate. He is working out a low interest loan with his bank to transfer the higher interest debt. That part is easy for him. Although he carries debt, he has good credit because he has a decent salary and has never missed a payment on his loans or cards. He will take longer than me to pay off though because of his higher debt load. We've decided not to accelerate payments on his debt because his extra money is spent on his kids. Child support and children's activities are more important than paying off debts faster.

SO my plan is to follow my debt repayment schedule and accelerate it if I can. Once I am completely paid off, we will do this same process for what's left on his debt. Once those are all cleared up (estimate 3 years), we look into buying a house. It seems as I am creating goals, there are more goals within those goals.

Ultimate goal is to buy a house. Within that goal are the goals of paying off the debts. Within those goals are more goals of each individual debt. I suppose it makes it a lot easier to stay motivated when you can have this checklist of benchmarks along the way. It also makes it exciting to measure your progress with items you can actually see!