Debt

September Update: $10,000 Debt Repayment

In June I announced my mission to pay off $9,888.00 in debt by the end of the year.  I’ll be utilizing every means necessary to do it, including:

• Reducing weekly spending
• Re-starting my mystery shopping side hustle
• Pick up extra writing jobs
• Temporarily halt deposits into our emergency fund / savings

I’m three months in, and making significant progress towards my goal.  Here’s this month’s breakdown:

Minimum Monthly Payment

The minimum monthly payment for the current billing cycle was $130.  The minimum payment was already factored into our monthly budget therefore no reduction in spending or extra income needed to cover this.

Suspension Of Saving

Until the debt is gone, we’re suspending our monthly contributions to our emergency fund / savings.  This gives us an additional $500 to put towards the debt.

Reduction of Spending

We reduced our weekly entertainment spending by $90 per week,  adding $360 to our debt repayment effort.  This is more than last month (unexpected vet expense), but still less than July.  We budgeted $50 a week, for a total of $200, as an initial payment to a photographer for our son’s senior pictures.  We’ll have to shell out more for the pictures, but at least it’s a start.

Mystery Shopping

I didn’t have any mystery shopping payments to add to this month’s payment, but I did pick up a really great one that will pay out next month.  I’ll include details of that in next month’s post when I can include the extra funds in the debt repayment.

Extra Writing

As I mentioned last month, I had several extra writing jobs that paid out an extra $650 that all went towards this month’s debt take down repayment.

Our debt payment this month breaks down as follows:

• Minimum payment : $130
• Suspension of Saving:  $500
• Reduction of Spending:  $360
• Extra Writing Payment:  $650

Total payment:  $1640

Thus far, I’ve made the following payments:

• July: $1208
• August $937
• September: $1640

For a total debt repayment of $3785, leaving a balance of $6103 (remember, this debt is under a 0% interest credit card promotional offer).  In order to meet my goal, I need to make three final payments of $2034.33.  That’s going to be hard to do, but I’m going to do my best and take down as much debt as I can!

Brought to you courtesy of Brock

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