Thursday, January 17

(Sporadic) Money Update: 2018, or, Imagine Me Rolling My Eyes

I am so sick of paying down debt.  So let's talk about it!

My husband and I are in the middle of this debt-paying thing.  At this point we have completed several of the most important steps:

- figured out how much debt we actually have, which is horrifying but necessary
- refinanced all of our loans for a lower interest rate (which will save us approximately $40,000 over the life of the loan)
- sucked it up and started paying ridiculous amounts of money on our loans

That means that we are in the "paying ridiculous amounts of money" stage.
  On average, 40-50% of our take-home pay goes directly to loans.  That's to pay the minimum on everything.  So we pay it.  Every month, we pay it.  We pay it, and we pay it, and we pay it and pay it and pay it.  And still there's more.

So where are we after about two years of payments?  We started formally tracking our debt in January 2017.  At that point we had already been paying things down for about four months, and we owed $472,016.32.  Our new debt total as of Jan 1 2019 is... drum roll please...

$369,580.07.

I gotta say, being in the middle of paying down over $500,000 is a drag.  I mean, is that second number even lower?  Are we making a dent in this?  Supposedly if we keep things up at this rate, we will be debt free except our mortgage in another five years*, but right now it feels like we're throwing money down a bottomless pit.  We're not filling anything in.  We can't even hear it hit bottom.  It just silently disappears.

I think it's important to note that paying debt isn't the only thing we are doing with our money, at the behest of our financial advisor.  He told us to prepare for the future and also to live our lives.  Because of this we clearly are not strict (or loose) adherents to the Dave Ramsey method.  We maxed out my 401k last year.  We have a properly stocked emergency fund with several months' of expenses tucked away.  We even made a small addition to our house last year.  And it's all great, but I hate it at the same time because I will never feel like we are making meaningful financial progress until our debt is going away.

Okay, if you're so sick of paying debt, why not move under a bridge and put all of your money towards your debt for a couple years?  Because that would be stupid, that's why.  Bridges are cold and there's nowhere to cook dinner down there.  But I see your point.  There's room for us to tighten our belts and get more aggressive with our debt, or at least there was last year.  This year, there's no rocking the boat until we know what things will look like financially.

I guess we will just keep paying the same payments for now.

::eye roll::

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*We have several different loans and they all have different terms.  The smallest loan should be paid off in about a year; the next smallest, about a year after that.  Then all that's left are the big ones, which should be paid in full sometime in 2024.  They talk all the time about how doctors are really good at delayed gratification, but I cannot overemphasize how impatient I feel about getting rid of these loans.  So five more years = an actual eternity.

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