Here I Go

Here I am with a blog.  I decided to just go ahead and do it.  I don't know what all I will share but it will be straight from the heart.  You may wonder where 'Outobutter' comes from for my blog name.  I don't have a fancy explanation.  One day in college I needed a screen name and that is what was born.  Therefore, I thought it only fitting to keep it rather than come up with some other clever name.  :)

This week will begin our first payment toward debt reduction in a big way.  Hubs and I are on a mission.  We want to get rid of our debt (other than the mortgage) in 3 1/2 years.  I'm a little bit embarrassed to share that we have almost $58,000 in debt.  Nine years of college combined, two newer cars, and a personal loan for the woodstove have led us to this point.  We know it needs to change.  I've laid out a plan and we are moving forward with excitement.

I actually really enjoy budgeting and the like.  Maybe I missed a calling to help others with debt??  Perhaps this could be a way for me to help on a smaller scale.  I would love for my mistakes and accomplishments to be an inspiration for others.  If we can set up a plan to get rid of $58,000 of debt in three and a half years, I'm certain that you can make a plan to do the same.  Do I expect everything to go smoothly?  I think that would be foolish.  However, I do plan to stick to our budget and do my part to make sure we can follow this plan to the best of our abilities. 

First thing is first, according to Dave Ramsey, is to set aside $1000 in an emergency fund.  Check.  Thankfully, we were able to take money from our taxes to have this done quickly.  It may take some of you months to accomplish this.  It's okay.  We all need to start somewhere.  Truth is, there will be things that come up along the way.  Instead of having to take away from what we are paying on our loans, we will have the emergency fund for that.  A few ideas to get that emergency fund ready would be to have a garage sale, sell things on Craigslist or eBay, trim the grocery or eating out budget, or simply stop buying those things we want but that we don't actually need.  There will be time for that later on.  I recently re-evaluated our eating out budget.  I was budgeting $120/month.  After I started a menu that we stick to, we now eat out about once every two weeks.  I can cut that budget in half and instantly save $60/month.  That ends up being $720/year.  Wow!  So much money is wasted from eating out and we want to use that pay off debt!

Here's what our first goal looks like:

Student Loan #1: Current payoff is $4505.15 with 5.375% interest
With our first paycheck for the month of May we will be paying $631.53.  The goal is to pay that each month and have this loan paid off in November of this year instead of paying $100 payment for another five years.  Once this loan is paid off we will take the $631.53 and add it to what is already being paid on another loan.  In this case, it will be our loan on the woodstove.  We're tackling the lowest loan first, no matter the interest rate. 

I also like the idea of sharing this all in a blog to help keep myself accountable.  My family and our future is worth it.  So is yours.