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Home > Oh man! I only paid off a net $100/month over the last four months!

Oh man! I only paid off a net $100/month over the last four months!

January 17th, 2010 at 02:45 pm

This is despite thousands in payments. No, I don't have massive interest rates (although some have skyrocketed and need to be paid off badly, Capital One), but I do have massive Christmas costs that pretty much offset my payments.



I guess I need to get more serious - I think getting some Dave Ramsey books is in order. I have got the family on board more than before, but Christmas has ALWAYS been our Achilles Heel. I would like nothing better than to institute a no charge policy for Christmas. We have at least made most Christmas costs clothing costs which have come down somewhat over the rest of the year. For now I will go run some numbers on Quickenonline, my usual post-Christmas wallowing in grief.

Posted in Household Expenses, Rants | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Oh man! I only paid off a net $100/month over the last four months!”

  1. NJDebbie Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 03:24 pm 1263741867
    1263741867

    I feel your pain. I think that we all can benefit from Dave Ramsey. I've followed him for a while, but not on everything. I think it's a good idea to institute a no charge Christmas. Good luck!

  2. ralph Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 04:08 pm 1263744527
    1263744527

    I think it's a good idea to institute a no charge Christmas. Good luck!
    I'll need it!

  3. cptacek Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 04:33 pm 1263746030
    1263746030

    I just started snowballing a few months ago. My pickup loan died a natural death, so I just started with that money as the seed to the snowball. I've already paid off two small loans already and increased the snowball by $85.

    I have a piece of paper starting me in the face every time I'm at the computer, saying:
    Capital One: 4 months
    Student Loan: 6 months
    etc...

    My payoff date for all of them isn't until 2/2014, but when I started it was 5/2014, so I did scrounge up enough in the past few months to knock 3 months off the pay off date!

  4. crazyliblady Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 07:45 pm 1263757541
    1263757541

    Have you considered opening a Christmas Club account? If you know you want to spend $500, for example, you can divide that up into small deposits over the year and have enough for Christmas shopping. I do this with my car taxes and it works for me.

  5. KellyB Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 10:41 pm 1263768067
    1263768067

    Yes, definitely determine how much you spend on Christmas, divide that by 12 (or 11) and save that much in a SEPARATE account month to month. Magic - Christmas will come and you already have the money saved. I know it seems *impossible* at first, but until you start doing it with that bill and any others that "surprise" you every year but shouldn't, you'll always feel behind instead of getting ahead.

  6. Petunia Says:
    January 19th, 2010 at 04:08 am 1263874086
    1263874086

    Did you spend most of your money on Christmas gifts, or was it the whole Christmas experience? (For us it's gifts, giving tree at church, cards, carousel downtown, live tree at a tree farm, certain treats that involve butter, chocolate chips and exotic nut butters.) If you look at the whole picture you may find that there are certain things your family really doesn't care about, and those would be the things to delete next year.

    We also save ahead for Christmas.

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