June was not as successful as we would have hoped in any sense.
Ryan's truck broke down. I mean, while I was on the phone with him while he was driving with Caleb in his truck, his truck broke down. We had to get it towed to our mechanic and it was in the shop for a couple of days. Luckily our mechanic is a family friend and does our work for cost and doesn't charge us out the booty for labor. That set us back a pretty little penny and hurt our hearts a bit.
We also decided to buy a small commuter car for Ryan. Ryan's truck gets maybe, maybe, 18 MPG on a good day. He drives 80 miles a day to work and to pick up Caleb from my mom's. We bit the bullet and pulled a little money from our savings account to get him a 1999 commuter car to hopefully save us gas. This seemed like such a great move. Yes, it sucked to pull money from our savings, but if we could save even $200/month in gas money it would be worth it. Bad side? It has an oil leak and since we got Ryan's truck out of the shop, the hoopdy - what I call it - has now been in. I am dreading getting that bill back. But I'm still hoping it will be a win for us in the long run.
As much as the two things mentioned above sucked, we did pay some debt off this month. Overall, we paid off $3140!
It isn't the huge numbers we managed to pay off in month's past but it is still something. Better then nothing and still getting us closer to our ultimate goal of paying off most of our debt by the end of 2015.
I thought I would also do an update on our total debt since it has been 5 solid months of debt eliminating and things have fluctuated so much.
If you remember back when we started I told you that we were starting this challenge with about $50k in debt. We kicked butt for the first 3 months paying off almost $17k! Our 4th month was even more amazing, due to making some good choices, and we paid off almost $14k! Together, in 4 months, we managed to pay off almost $31k in debt! AMAZING!!!!
But with paying off, comes other things that take their place, unfortunately. We decided to get me a new car. We decided to get Ryan a commuter (not that that increased our debt in any way because we paid cash for it). As it stands, today, the beginning of our 6th month in eliminating our debt, we have about $71k in debt that we would like to not have someday. Obviously this includes my new car, which we know won't be paid off, and Ryan's truck. Without those two things we have about $16k left to try and pay off!
We are doing great and if we can stick to what we have been doing and attempt to do even a little bit more, I see no reason why we won't be able to just have a car, truck and house payment by the end of 2015.
Thank you for all of your kind words and encouragement on my past budget posts. It really helps with my motivation :) If you have missed any of our budget updates you can check those out here.
You are such an inspiration to me! I just created a brand new budget with the hope of being debt free in 2 years (minus Ryan's school loans which aren't included and we haven't even received notice of yet). It's really daunting for me to look at it, but then I think of all the work you've accomplished so fast and know it can be done.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE IT when you share what you've paid off! GO YOU GUYS!
ReplyDeleteYay for Budget updates. Glad that you got a commuter car, with the gas prices these days, yikes! I take a vanpool to work, so that helps BIG time on the gas and mileage and maintenance to my car. Although because I only drive 2 miles to the vanpool spot, my car gets horrible gas mileage now! Oops.
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