THE DEBT DIARIES: RECONFIGURING

💸 The Debt Diaries: Reconfiguring!

I had my October progress reports all listed out and ready to go, but I actually deleted them. There won’t be any updates with numbers for a couple of months while I work on re-configuring my Debt Diaries and work on consolidating some of the high interest debts. This series will be back (and better!) in December, I’m predicting.

Here are some of the changes you’re likely to see:

• Inclusion of more debt: when I first started this series, I mentioned that it excluded several things: our mortgage, my student loans, Jerry’s Amazon card, and our two auto loans. Excluding those means an inaccurate calculation of our debts and actual payments, though. From now on, you’ll see our two auto loans and Jerry’s Amazon card included. We actually pay a lot more towards our debt each month due to those, but you haven’t been seeing it here! We also have a lot more debt because of those, so again… you’ll see it here. I’ll still exclude the mortgage though because it’s not something we’re actively working on paying off aggressively right now because we have a long way to go and because we’d also like to move in a few years. It’s also considered “good debt,” though I’d argue that no debt is good. You also won’t see the student loans for similar reasons but also because I’m enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Working as a public librarian means that after ten years of payments on the Income Based Repayment Plan, my remaining balance will be forgiven. I’ve got just under nine years to go. Because of this, again… not paying it down aggressively and just paying what we have to each month (which is still a lot and close to $400).
• Debt consolidation: Jerry and I are planning on trying to consolidate his Amazon card and my PayPal card due to high interest. Ideally, we’d like to take out a lower interest personal loan and pay them off with that which will also then roll those both into one payment instead of two. We’re holding off on applying for the loan until December though while I’m still in a no-interest promotional period.
• Inclusion of savings and sinking funds: In addition to paying off debt, we are also working to rebuild our regular savings account and our sinking funds (savings for specific needs / goals). I think I’m going to start tracking that progress on here too, simply because it will help hold me more accountable on increasing these accounts. I also like to see the progress made from month to month.

And that’s it! That means this series will be on a short and temporary hiatus while I get this all recalculated and ready to go again. I’ll relaunch the series before the year ends and it will definitely be more inclusive. In the meantime, we will still be working on paying off debt behind the scenes, although I will admit my spending has been a bit bad lately and I need to reign it back in.

In a nutshell, this series will now include ALL of our debt, excluding our mortgage and my student loans.