Hills and Bills
>> Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Not a whole lot shakin' over here. Michael and I both took the day off and relaxed for most of the day. Cleaned, ran a few errands, and relaxed. It was great. I did make one mistake though of checking my work email around 4:00. That was dumb. It only made me realize what small disasters will be awaiting me when I get there in the morning.
To make it worse, our department is going bowling in the afternoon for a team-building event. Albeit I'm very excited and it should be tons of fun, it's another half day where I will be out of the office.
Tonight I only ran 2 miles but it was a perfectly small, yet challenging and enjoyable run. About 1/4 mile from my house is a road that goes up a hill. Leaving my house the climb up the hill is gradual, but on the other side, it's very steap. I ran 1/2 mile (up and over the hill) 4 times for a total of 2 miles and it also meant I climbed the hill gradually twice and on the steap side twice.
I don't think it's anything to brag about, but it was quick and better than nothing!
On a completely non-fitness related note, let's talk finances.
As an accountant, I feel like budgeting and managing our finances comes very easy to me. I take pride in mine and Michael's excellent credit scores and minimal debt. We have a mortgage, a car loan, and student loan debt. The only thing ever on my credit card is business expenses that I'm getting reimbursed for.
I never thought any of the debt we had was bad. I make our monthly payments on time and usually pay a little extra toward everything. We don't have trouble financially and I always thought this was "good enough". In our society, having these forms of debt is seen as "normal" or even, it's sad to say, BETTER than normal so I never worried about them.
Lately I've been feeling like that just isn't good enough anymore. I started doing some research and have decided to adopt Dave Ramsey's snowball effect with our debt. The idea is that instead of paying "a little extra" toward everything like I'm currently doing, only pay extra on the smallest balance and the regular payments toward everything else. Then, once that balance is paid off, apply that entire payment to the next smallest and it snowballs.
When I did the calculations (in Excel, of course, b/c that's just what I do), I realized that we could be debt free (all except mortgage) in four years. FOUR YEARS! Mind you, I have student loan debt that I thought would take a decade or more to pay off so I'm really excited!!!
In addition to this, Michael and I together determined some other financial goals that we're shooting for which I think is great!
I'm excited about our new focus on where we want our money to go. It's a great feeling!
Oh, and by the way, this all came about because I got a 5% raise on Monday!! WOWSA! Totally unexpected but I'll take it!!!
Here's to hills and bills!
Kelsalynn
2 comments:
I'm still wondering why I didn't go into finance! Congrats on your raise! You work hard and deserve it! We recently had a union meeting to ratify the new contract - it's a 4 year agreement, which sucks, because the package sucks! We're only getting a 1% raise each year for the next for years. Another thing the union members were freaking out about is that they want to change our payment system so that instead of receiving paychecks over 12 months, we only get them over 10. Their rationale is that it helps us earn interest on our money instead of the district... we'll see. Basically, I'm just glad Joe has a well paying job. I don't know how else we could make it work!
We're like you guys; our only debt is a mortgage, car payment, and student loans. I would love to pay more on the student loans and have them finished with, as well as the car payment (which is brand new). The mortgage? Well, I figure that's something we'll be paying for a LONG time, no matter what.
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