Debt Free Journey Update 2
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I wish I had a bigger updated debt payoff amount for this month, but I don’t. We have only been able to pay off what equals to another $120 thanks to freaking interest on our student loans. I *hate* these things with a passion. Paying these off will probably make me cry and I cannot wait. I am trying to focus on the fact that every little bit counts though.
Why So Little Debt Payoff?
As you will recall from an earlier post, we got hit with the flu. Hard. You can read about the misery here. Unfortunately, this happened in between paydays and after we had spent our budgeted amount for groceries. I had used our HSA card to stock up on supplies for the cold and flu season a couple of months ago. Between all of us in the house, we used those up quick. Sadly, we had to dip into our emergency fund a bit. Basically, Murphy hit us as soon as we got really serious about paying this debt off. That’s how it happens though.
I tried for several days to just use what we had at home and was really thankful that I had prepared some elderberry syrup earlier in the season. However, once my fever hit 103* it was apparent I needed a little bit more help. Then, Wildchild came down with a 104* fever after I sent Aaron to the store. So glad we pulled a bit from our emergency fund for more medicine, popsicles, etc. Next cold and flu season, I will make sure we are even more stocked up.
As you can tell, part of the reason our debt payoff was so little was because we had to replenish our emergency fund a bit. With Aaron missing a day or so of work due to all of us having the flu, his paycheck was a little less than expected as well. I had to tweak the budget more than usual, but it all worked out. April is already on track to be a better month!
How We Are Staying Motivated
The biggest part of this battle is mostly in our head. The Dave Ramsey plan is very focused on modifying behaviors around money and keeping motivated definitely helps with that. I have a few different things I use when I am feeling like this journey is hopeless.
One of my favorite places to find motivation is to hop on Facebook and head over to The Ramsey Baby Steps Community. You’ll find people sharing their posts about reaching debt freedom, asking for advice, and sharing motivation to keep on plugging along. YouTube is a great place to find video motivation. You can find hundreds of videos of people visiting Dave Ramsey’s show to do their debt free screams. The most important thing I am doing right now to stay motivated is to re-read this book.
If you cannot afford Financial Peace University, getting this book from Amazon, your library, or even through a free trial on Audible will help you on your debt free journey immensely! I believe you can even find the audio book for free on YouTube. I am planning to restart Audible with a free trial to download the book and be able to listen to it throughout the day while running after Wildchild. Hopefully, Aaron can listen to it on his way home as well. Gotta keep that motivation up every way we can!
I wish our update was just as exciting as before, but sometimes our progress on this journey is small. We will get there eventually, but apparently some months are slower than others. I am looking forward to seeing what we can do with the month of April. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that nobody else ends up sick. I am sure that our next update will be pretty awesome!
- Barbara
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