Hooray! My early credit card payment posted: $23 to principal. So I paid off $2545, $20 over my goal, in November.

This was on a credit card that I used to reserve my England hotel rooms for our trip in May. It does not have a pretty interest rate, so I'm going to pay off the remaining balance on payday (Friday). This means I should absolutely slaughter my December goal! :-)

Small payment posted to an NT credit card; $8 in principal.

$2522 down, only $3 to go! I've sent a credit card payment early so I'll be sure to make my monthly goal. Should hit later in the week.

OK, it's been awhile since I checked balances and some automatic and extra payments have posted:

NT CCs: $181, $7 and $272 of principal
CJ personal loan: $410 of principal
AS student loan: $51 of principal
And I've done the math 3 times and concluded I messed up last time: total debt is $8 lower than I thought.

So $929 more paid. For the November Ad Hoc goal, that's $2514 down, $11 to go!

Clearly I will have to pay extra on something and make the goal, since I'm so close. :-)

Paid off GBP77, or about $154, in principal.

$1585 down, $940 to go!

One card I paid extra on this month, I may not get balance confirmation till next month. I wonder if that's going to make me a little under goal? Ordinarily that would spur me to pay extra somewhere else somehow, but Xmas is coming like a freight train, so extra money has to get saved for that!

Oh well, if I show up as falling short, I'll know next month will be that much more impressive when the payment does hit.

Paid $292 of principal on my credit card. So for my November goal, I've paid $1431 down, with $1094 to go.

Small payment toward my November goal: $287 of principal on my mortgage. That's $1139 down, $1386 to go.

Finally got NT's overdraft account down to zero. Hooray! Another one for the Old Debt Graveyard page.

I also tried to send an extra payment to one of his credit cards, but I'm going to wait to make sure it went through; the process was a little vague and I'm not sure if the payment will post or get sent back to the account.

So for now, I'll just count the overdraft payoff: about US$852. So in my November goal, that's $852 down, $1673 to go.

Yay, I made my October goal! My personal loan payment hit today and $399 went toward principal, so I paid off $2544 this month, exceeding my goal of $2525.

My November goal begins immediately: Pay off $2525 in principal by Nov. 30.

AS student loan payment finally processed (I sent it in on the 2nd, but the company takes a long time to post updated numbers online). $53 went to principal, so that's $2145 down, $380 to go on our October goal.

A payment came in from an eBay sale and I was able to put all $100 toward short-term (I call it "fun-money") savings, since we won't need it to hit our debt-repayment goal for the month. I put $25 into various savings goals and $75 into our Halloween party fund. We want to kind of go all-out for our party, but only up to the point we can pay for it; nothing will go on credit cards.

Speaking of Halloween, we've just started Week 3 of our 4-week workout plan, and we're so pleased with the results so far, we're already pledging to continue our five-day-a-week regimen to Thanksgiving. Just like with debt reduction, it helps to think in short, manageable goals rather than the overwhelming big picture! But here's hoping we form a habit that lasts awhile.

$293 to principal, so we're now at $2092 down with $433 to go for the month. I know we'll pay off at least $450 more this month just with minimum automatic payments, so we should just hit our goal!

I love the first of the month! I used to dread bills coming due, but now I can't wait to pay them.

Another UK credit card payment posted; GBP140, or about $280, went to principal. So that's now $1799 down, $726 to go in October!

Paid $286 in principal.

October goal progress: $1519 down, $1006 to go!

I've been so busy I haven't been able to check NT's UK accounts and see what's going on there, so a number of debts have gone down a little due to automatic payments and the big wire transfer I did in September. Here's what I paid off:
Overdraft: $951
NT CC 3: $13
NT mortgage 1: $122
NT mortgage 2: $26
NT mortgage 3: $27
NT CC 1: $94
----
TOTAL: $1,233

$1,233 down, $1,292 to go. Half my October goal down in what feels like one fell swoop!

OK, on to the next step in my Ad Hoc Plan. Now that NT's full-time job kicked in, I wanted to make our repayment a little more aggressive, though the bulk of this new money will go toward spending money and saving up for travel, home improvement, etc. $2500 seemed like a good goal, and $2525 was catchy, so I decided to make that our new monthly goal.

I updated our overall goal, and realized that means I'm aiming to pay off almost $20K by the end of March, before our trip! Sounds crazy until I realize that in August and September, we paid $5,008, more than a quarter of that.

If we were able to keep at this pace, we'd be able to pay off all our debt, including our mortgages, in 15 years. (That means if I manage to snowball payments once I start eliminating debts, it could be faster than that.) Another exciting thought: We could be free of consumer/credit debt in less than three years. I've had credit card debts since I was about 24, so that would be an amazing feeling.

It's all about positive visualization!

As I've probably mentioned, I find the UK side of our finances confusing. :-) So I just figured out how to check another credit card balance online, and turns out a payment had posted since the last time I got the balance in the mail. Its balance was 141 pounds (about $282) lower than last time, so that means we've reached our monthly goal!

Goal: pay off $2185
Results: Paid off $2427!

I can only check one of NT's UK credit cards online; the others I have to wait for the print statements to come. Annoying! I've gotten so spoiled by online access.

Anyway, the one I can check posted a small reduction in principal--3 pounds, or about 6 bucks. That brings us a tiny step closer to making our goal: $2145 down, $40 to go.

Today my personal loan payment posted. I managed to put a few extra hundred toward it, so I paid off $760 in principal! So $2139 down, only $46 to go in September. Hopefully I'll manage that somehow, but even if I don't, I got closer to my goal than expected.

AS's student loan payment posted today, paying off $55 in principal instead of the expected $48. Hooray! So that's $1,379 paid, $806 to go on my September challenge.

I sold 2 books on half.com and cleared $45, and we should be able to sell an unused TiVo box, which we got for $40, for $75. So I'm putting an extra $120 toward my personal loan payment going out on Friday. That will get me much closer to hitting my goal, even if I don't quite make it. I'll have to watch closely and make sure they put the extra toward principal, as this will be the first time I pay extra on this new loan.

Paid $296 toward principal. So $1324 down, $861 to go on my September goal.

It's frustrating having such large amounts of debt, because no matter how much I'm able to throw at it, it always feels like a drop in the bucket. These monthly goals really help me feel like I'm accomplishing something so I don't lose focus.

Another short-term thing that helps is tackling some smaller, high-interest debt. The low-hanging fruit, so to speak. I got rid of my own reserve line balance on my checking account first; now my sights are set on NT's overdraft balance on his UK account. I think I'll be able to pay more than half of it off in October and knock the rest out in early November. Then he's got a small credit card balance that I think I'll be able to pay off in December. So I'm hoping I'll be able to say I've paid off two more debts by the end of the year.

That'd make 2007 quite memorable, since I also paid off my student loan in May and my reserve line just recently. Four debts gone in one year would be exhilerating!

My mortgage payment and NT's UK mortgage payments posted, so I've finally chipped away some more of my September challenge. I estimate we paid off $436 in principal total. So that's $1028 paid, $1157 to go.

I think we'll fall a little short this month, but we'll come pretty close.

Still getting the hang of tracking the balances of all of NT's UK credit cards and mortgages. One of them, I'd written down an old balance and it was actually more. But, a couple others have gone down, to the tune of about 73 pounds and some change, or about US$147. I think. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Soooo, $592 down, $1593 to go for September. I know it looks like I'm way ahead, but it's still doubtful that I'll make my September goal. I'll keep trying, though!

Darn, I had thought they took my wire transfer fee out of my transfer amount, but they actually charged it separately. That means, looking at the exchange rate, it's more what I feared it was. I thought I saw a stronger exchange rate listed on the news last night, but maybe it didn't come in time to affect my transfer, or maybe the banks use a different one.

The good news is, my debt calculations were right. The downside is I have to deal with an extra $50 out of my own checking account.

Oh well, onward and upward. :-)

I finally figured out how to make wire transfers into NT's UK checking account, so now I can not only throw money in there to cover his regular bills, I can work on paying down his overdraft balance (now that mine is paid off). So yesterday I wired enough money to cover his August and September bills, plus a some extra to whittle down his overdraft debt. Thanks to a surge in the US dollar against the British pound, it ended up being more pounds than I'd hoped for! According to my calculations, I estimate I paid down about US$445 worth of his overdraft, so that's what I'm counting toward my September challenge.

I'll have to pay extra on one of my other bills in order to make the challenge, but luckily I have a month and a half to figure that out. I'm just happy I was able to pay some extra, and that the exchange rate worked in my favor!

So, $445 down, $1740 to go on my September goal.

My personal loan hit; $404 went to principal. Not as much as I thought, since my first payment last month paid off $475, but it's still a pretty good chunk.

On the upside, I've now reached and surpassed my August goal of paying off at least $2185 in principal. I paid a total of $2581! Overshot by $396.

I'm not sure if I'll see any more debt pay-down this month, so I'm going to go ahead and post my results on my sidebar. If I manage any more, I'll put it toward my September goal.

A student loan payment and a credit card payment both hit today: $48 went toward principal on the student loan and $307 of principal on the credit card, for a total of $355 today.

Soo, $2177 down, $8 to go on my August goal. I have a payment on my personal loan going out today, so I should reach my goal in a day or two.

Because I paid so aggressively this month, I may have trouble hitting my September goal, but I'm working on conserving money in other areas so I don't fall short!

Well, for the first time since I got serious, anyway. :-)

I'm having trouble figuring out how to transfer money to pay down NT's overdraft debt in the UK (plus put in the extra money he needs to make his automatic payments), but it'll be OK for about another month. I'll have to figure out my drop-dead deadline for getting some money over there, but meantime, I've got this money sitting here and it's driving me nuts not putting it toward something.

So I used most of what I currently have to pay off my own reserve line balance! This will eliminate future monthly payments and interest accrual, and the worst consequence will be that I overshoot my August goal and fall short on September's, but it will even out to the same amount in the challenge, so that doesn't bother me.

So...$672 toward principal bringing me to $1822 down, $363 to go for August. I'll easily surpass that just with my remaining minimum payments this month.

This is nice. I needed a little boost!

Made a small payment to my reserve line today; $29 went toward principal debt. So for the August challenge, I've paid $1150 so far, with $1035 to go.

I'll probably see what I can shuffle around to pay off some of NT's overdraft balance, but it'll be an international wire transfer to his UK checking account, so a little complicated. I signed up for Western Union and MoneyGram, but it looks like MoneyGram is the cheaper option for now--$25 to transfer $800. I'm hoping I can work something out with PayPal accounts where maybe we could get charged even less, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

OK, I've updated my info with scary, scary new numbers, and made a new payment plan that incorporates the minimum principal we all typically pay in a month, plus $555 to pay down principal in the proposed amount of our spring '08 England trip (figured into our debt as $5,000 estimated future debt).

I'm calling it The Ad Hoc Plan, because hopefully I'll be able to switch to a more aggressive plan once I find out what NT's going to bring home once he finishes the temp-to-perm transition (which feels like it's taking forever!)

The new goal is to pay off $2,185 of principal per month through March 2008. We've paid $1121 so far in August, so we have $1062 to go by 8/31/07.