I said I would try and publish my progress on paying off my debt and it’s been about a month and a half. Although when you see the numbers it may not seem like things are moving in the right direction it feels better. It’s probably partially due to having a goal and a plan to take out my debts. November and December are big months for me as my Amazon arbitrage side hustle really picks up during the 4th quarter, and mostly those sales come in November and December. My goal was to knock down some extra debt during these months. And I sort of did.
Another thing I’ve started working on is a refinance. My home has a first and a second mortgage on it. It seemed like a good idea at the time when I originally got the loan, but the higher interest on the second has been really bugging me, along with the nagging feeling that there would be a balloon payment (ie. you have to refinance it or pay it off) due soon so I wanted to get it done. It’s not quite as good as t I was hoping for but there should be some additional cash flow along with the lower interest that will help to pay down some additional debts or put some money into savings.
Enough said, here are the numbers for the end of December:
| Category | Starting Debt as of October 16, 2019 | Balance as of 12/31/2019 |
| CREDIT CARDS 4 | 319.93 | 389.94 |
| CREDIT CARDS 2 | 1,700.14 | 2,690.97 |
| 0 | ||
| CREDIT CARDS 1 | 13,225.42 | 7,221.12 |
| AUTO LOANS | 18,718.26 | 18,114.44 |
| STUDENT LOANS | 30,259.94 | 30,249.48 |
| 0 | ||
| HOME LOANS 3 | 147,606.51 | 146,018.32 |
| 0 | ||
| HOME LOANS 4 | 0 | 309,500.00 |
| Total Debts | 513,160.12 | 514,184.27 |
Overall, we did pretty good even though we increased our total debt by about $1,000. I’ll bet there are some out there who would disagree. After all, how can you call going the wrong way with the total balance a good thing? I increased my debt, right? Not good! Here are a couple of good things that came out of it though. We finalized the refinance and some fees were added into the balance at the same time we were able to get rid of one of the lingering credit cards. At this point, the 2 credit cards we have left will have balances that go up and down from time to time because of the timing of our Amazon Arbitrage business. Generally speaking though, we pay these cards off each time we get a payment from Amazon so we never have to pay interest which is the goal.
Now that we finally have the credit cards under control (knocking on wood) we can turn our focus to the student loans and some additional savings.
If you are interested in how this report started you can check it out here: