Debt Progress

I paid off my student loans!!!  I know at least some of you feel my joy.  I graduated from design school in 1999, so I should have been paid off a long time ago, but when I had my kids I took a few years off from repayment, and when I started paying again, I lowered my payments by a good deal because our whole budget was radically different, so it took 14 years, and that's just how it is.

I wrote a post about a year ago that mentioned us paying off our debts to get ready to save for travel, and since then we have paid off just about everything we owed except our house.  We paid off the only car we still owed money on, and then about a month later our other car passed away pretty dramatically.  So we replaced one car payment with another, which is not how we wanted to do it, but we plan to pay that one off early, and that's just how it is.

So anyway, now that my student loan is paid in full (So.  Excited.), the only monthly debt payments we have are our house and car.  Again, the only monthly debt payments we have are our house and car.  And May and June were not kind to us financially.  We found out we had termites, we had a major dishwasher leak and had to replace all of our carpet, we had to replace our roof, and we had to replace 2/3 of our air conditioner/HVAC stuff (whatever - I'm not an engineer).  And we still managed to pay for all of those things up front because we got a decent tax refund (which we usually just fritter away, but not this year).

Of course we still have all our monthly bills, like internet, phone, electricity, child care, etc., etc., and I'm constantly trying to figure out how to whittle those down, too (I think cable will be the next casualty).  BUT, those payments are not for money we've already spent.  We save up and pay for things with cash now or we don't get them at all, and that's what we're teaching our kids to do, too.  Debt is bad, people.  It only took me a few decades to get that down.

So we're on our way!  Or maybe we're on our way to being on our way.  Anyway, we no longer have only $127 in our savings account because we are able to put money away every payday, and it really feels good.  Like really, really good.  I can taste the Thai street food already . . . :)



Not quite yet, but someday!

Why I Don't Make New Year's Resolutions

Oh my goodness, it has been way, way too long since my last post.  October?  What the heck?  (OK, here's an aside:  I'm actually quite an accomplished swearer, but having kids has made me try really hard to say things like "heck" and "goodness."  I'm not always successful, but I try.  Anyway, I read something recently that said people who curse tend to be more honest than people who don't, so you can rest assured I'm telling you the truth :)

So I don't really make New Year's resolutions because I feel like they are often too broad and/or unrealistic to succeed, and when they fail, we feel worse about ourselves than we did before we made them.  But I do like to make a (short) list of things I'd like to do better, and one of those things is to blog more.  You can see I'm doing a bang-up job, it being June and all.  Hey, gimme a break; I had a really busy / expensive May and June (more on that later).

I was trying to keep this blog strictly about our travel plans, but since we won't be traveling anytime too soon, that is really restricting what I can write about, and I like writing, so I'm easing that restriction somewhat to write a little more about my family and me instead.  You're welcome.

Anyway, this post is just here to say that I still exist, and if you care about that then you should keep looking here for new posts.  I have several that I'm working on in my head at the moment, and I will get them into the blog soon, soon, soon.  Stay with me people!