My retirement funds are doing great, but that is not what registers emotionally with me. What registers is the debt.
When I started calculating my net worth in September 2007, I had
$14,693 Car #1
$14,603 credit card debt
$6,400 loan from family
Yikes! That makes me cringe. Today I am credit card debt free, and the relative is long paid in full. I still can't believe I took a family loan. I was between jobs, things were rough. It was paid a month later, but it still makes me feel bad. I hope I never have to do that again. All of this debt is gone except $8,800 on Car #1.
Since then, I added
$30,302 Car #2
$18,350 Business
Adding all that up, I have had $84,348 in debt in roughly the last year. The debt is currently at $45,204, so I have paid off about 46% of my total debt.
I believe I can pay all of this off this year. Fiance's business is set up to rake in some cash shortly. Even with only currently signed contracts or no new customers, it will make 5K/month. Unless some big wedding expenses are due at the end of 2008 (possible), I believe I can be debt free this year.
7 comments:
So are you still making 150k a year .. because if you are... no offence but 150-46k (I rounded sorry) is 104 ... which is a lot of money left over!
You could set aside 15-20k for your wedding easily, 20k for your retirmetn and still have 60k to live on!
I just dont understand how you can be in debt with 150k a year! You are spending with out thought... even though you know there is a problem and you have made progress you could make greater progress if you tried harder and made a plan!
Why not try and make a finacial plan with your fiance and have that as a post.
Maybe even having an expense journal and tracking everything you spend on... that way you can see where you are throwing your money away.
I had mistakenly put this at the end of an earlier entry... forgive the duplication...
I just read all the previous entries since you started this blog and some, admittedly not all, of the resulting comments.
I wanted to say it seems like often times your attempts at making your writing interesting is lost on some people. They equate each thing you do with great gravity and often times miss you were being silly for sillys sake. I like that you don't let the mean comments change your style.
Many of the commenters overlook how hard you have worked and how hard you can work. Instead they are mainly miffed that they don't make "150K", and don't appreciate how and why you decide to do things. For what it's worth, I don't make 150K. Oh well, I am happy with what I've got and seldom begrudge others for what they have.
You got rid of CC debt, you have funded a start-up business (a form of investing), purchased assets for a reasonable value (the cars), and still manage to intelligently fund a retirement plan.
I don't agree with your outlook towards the value of a family versus the value of a career, but you're young. Sometimes that comes across in a harsh assessment by you of why others make the money choices they do. I wouldn't be surprised to see that change after a period of marriage. And I'm not saying that means you will all the sudden want to become a stay at home Mom. Just saying you may see a shifting in priorities.
My only financial advice is - just because it is an expensive wedding doesn't make it a good one... A really smart cookie like you could whip up a really special event for a lot less than 30K. Don't try and impress, a year later no one will care what they had to eat, what the table centerpieces were or what the invitations looked like. They will care if it was an open bar, was the band fun, did the bride and groom say hi, or whether there were any fistfights...
Just my opinion, a little to-the-side of today's topic, and I already know I'm an old b-word by the way, but these huge Hollywood-style weddings everyone seems to think are the standard these days make me sick!
I can't tell you how many 20-somethings I know who have spent $15-25k-plus on one night of being the center the world,(whether or not they're each on their third marriage, have 6 kids together and have been living together for 20 years, naturally) then gone home to live in a cheap apartment, loaded down with enough debt to have easily financed medical school (or just as likely, demanded it from their parents, who couldn't afford it either).
To a lot of us slightly older folks, instead of impressing us,truly, it makes the bride look like a spoiled, self-centered diva, who has absolutely no clue about what marriage entails (self-sacrifice, putting others before yourself, self-discipline, practicality, etc.)- definitely not wife material. I say "bride" because my experience has been that it's overwhelmingluy usually the bride who wants it all.
And with alarming frequency (although not really so alarming when you consider the couple seemed to think they were there to rehearse for their Academy Awards), 3 years later, wedding debt still not paid off, the couple is divorced.
News flash: When you've been together for five minutes, have a combined net worth of 25 cents, and have been through nothing together (except of course the trauma of the proposed bout of Bridezilla-ism), you ain't got nothing to show off so much about, so calm down with all the self-promoting millionaire-style glitz and glamour wouldja? Geez, a nice little get-together with some cake and punch and a pretty white dress that's NOT Vera Wang will suffice, dontcha think, kids? Save the big time for your 25th Anniversary, when hopefully you'll have something marital to brag about and the means to pay for it.
Again, just my opinion, but I think it's pure class to see a lovely, simple ceremony, where it's about love and family rather than showing off with money that you don't have. A bride's glow of happiness is what makes her beautiful.
Pretensiousness is ugly and snotty, and anybody who eats up everything the advertisers want to brainwash us with is too stupid to live, let alone pair up and breed!
I plan on celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary in style with my kids! LOL.
And it will be a lavish affair that we didn't have the first time around.
Besides if we went with how long we've been living together we're almost at 9 years (married for almost 4 years). So I am guessing we're lasting longer than many other couples.
To Living Almost Large:
You go, girl!
The problem I have is your wasting so much money on unneeded things. I'm a 1005 disabled vet I get 33,000 a year thats it. I own my own house and have two cars and by the way three kids. To make it worse you say you work in an accounting field. If you really want to change your worth you need to change your life style and get off your high horse. You could have bought a used car for cash instead of paying all that money a month for car payments. I may not be flashy, but it would get you from point A to point B.
On your salary it is possible you can knock this out by December!!
Just focus
Next year this time, you will have 5 figures in the bank with no debt!!!
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