So in late July 2007, I found out our true collective debt and learned that I would have to transfer money over to the UK just to cover minimum bills.

Once I updated my numbers and looked at them, and wrote a very morose Aug. 1 blog entry, I actually felt better pretty quickly. I was pretty sure we'd hit our lowest point and that things could only get better. The debt numbers were painful, but also somewhat fascinating. I looked at them and felt like I had a superhuman task ahead of me to pay it off, and I was interested to see if I could do it. I guess there was no other way to cope, so I just looked at it as a huge challenge that would be very, very satisfying to overcome, if I could do it.

I had gradually come up with my own budgeting system. I kept three unsent draft e-mails in my Yahoo account that I could access from work or home. One tracked projected income and specific expenses for a couple months in the future so I could make sure I always had enough in the bank for upcoming needs; I deleted items as they hit our checking account. One kept track of our current debt, divided by home, credit and education and totaled at the bottom. And another listed my general income and expense amounts so I could easily paste it at the bottom of my first e-mail when it was time to project further, and modify to real life as I went along.

I continued to set myself monthly goals for reducing my debt, and always set them as aggressively as I could depending on what I could see in my projected budget.

In early August I paid off my first debt since I'd started, the high-interest reserve line on my checking account.

When I learned NT's paycheck amount, I knew I'd be able to put over $1000 more toward debt and still have a little money for luxuries.

In September I calculated our collective net worth and discovered that it was positive by almost $55,000. Even though all we had were retirement accounts and homes, it felt encouraging. I knew the amount would increase as we paid off debt and added a bit to our retirement savings.

In October I paid off our second debt: NT's high-interest overdraft balance. I had started a page on my blog called "The Old Debt Graveyard" so I could record my paid-off debts and see the list grow.

In December, encouraged by our progress so far, I decided to make a big long-term New Year's goal: to pay off all our credit card and personal debt in two years. I also decided to count the loan from my Dad as personal debt, not house debt. So that brought our credit/personal debt up over $70,000. I continued to set monthly goals for my overall debt reduction, but I separately tracked the reduction in my credit/personal debt.

In January 2008, I paid off our third debt. In March, April and May I paid off three more debts. These were all small balances, but it was very satisfying to say I'd paid off 6 debts in less than a year! One of them was our trip to England, and it was paid for before we left for the trip. That was a first in my life, at least for a major trip.

We did suffer financial setbacks and unexpected expenses nearly every month, but we also got some nice windfalls. Overall we managed to maintain momentum through May 2008.

Now I'm hitting some doldrums that may delay my plan to be credit-card-free by 12/31/09. Our monthly income is taking a temporary hit; we have some management expenses coming up in England; some student loans will start coming due in August or Septempber; our ARM is going to adjust in November. There are definitely negative ways to look at my progress: We might be slowing down; we've only paid 7% of our debt off so far.

On the other hand, we've paid nearly a quarter of our credit card debt since January, and we've paid over $30,000 of overall debt in less than a year!

My specific number goals help me stay motivated, but they can also cause me to get discouraged when I don't meet them. I just try to remind myself that I am still making progress and that the numbers are just arbitrary. No matter how much or how little I accomplish, as long as I keep paying it off, putting a little toward retirement and not using my credit cards, I'm going to be better off than I would have been if I'd just continued to live as I had for years.

So, that's my story thus far. A work in progress, and hopefully, someday, a stunning success story. Long way to go, though. I hope this encourages some new members of the SA blogs; even though I'm not there yet, and it's taken a lot of focus and willpower to even get this far, it's been so worth the effort to me. I feel that I'm much better off than many Americans just by having changed my philosophy to taking control of my finances, paying off debt, saving up money for retirement and living within my means, no matter what.

OK, it wasn't too hard figuring out where to trim the fat in my budget. First, we have $300 per month that is "exercise incentive money"; basically we can "earn" extra spending money by exercising, and if we don't exercise enough, the leftover money goes into extra debt repay or fun-money savings. Cut that line item for the forseeable future; we'll just have to exercise of our own free will, and do with a bit less spending money.

Then, I cut two of my regular US credit card payments back to the minimum payment. That way, I only had to cut $150 out of the extra money I send to the UK each month. I really want to get that account breaking even without my help, so I can stop paying $50+ per month for the privelege.

Looking over my budget made me feel good. I mean, we may not think this all the time, but we have plenty of luxuries we pay for. High-speed Internet. Cable TV. Netflix. A generous grocery/household category. Monthly haircuts. Decent spending money. There are lots of places we could cut in a true financial crisis. We're really lucky we didn't have to touch any of these this time.

Anyway, if this is the LAST of my nasty surprises for awhile, my August UK transfer should still be pretty big and exciting, and may even push us to the point of breaking even in that account.

PS: I'll update my "Bills and Budget" page if anyone's interested.

Oh yeah, and if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my rambles. It really is so good to work these things out in writing.

Credit card payment hit today: $301 toward principal. So that's $801 down, $649 to go on my July goal, and $53,478 to go on my Big-Picture Goal.

Got a bit of a shock when I checked my checking account today: AS's direct deposit came in $256.98 lower than usual. She checked into it, and it seems she's reached the point where her free tuition surpassed a certain dollar value, so the remainder must be taxed as income. The next five paychecks will be hit the same way, so that's a $1541.88 shortfall over the next three months.

Sigh. The sucker punches just keep coming, it seems. I'll have to rework my budget, but I know where this is going to hit hardest--our debt repayment. I just checked our tickets to Virginia, and the fare is nonrefundable. Guess canceling our trip isn't the way to make this up.

Ironically, AS's raise was also reflected in this paycheck. It probably kept this shortfall back by $30. Hard to see it as a plus at this point, though.

As soon as this shortfall ends, two student loans will start coming due, probably not at that rate but close. So really we're just starting the process a few months early.

Hmm...

Well, it's a good thing I'm relating my whole past history, because comparatively speaking this isn't that bad a blow. It just feels like one.

OK. In the last chapter I'd managed to get on a budget, but not much else.

So in late May 2007, about 2 months after we started, I finally sat down and figured out mine and AS's total debt. (NT's was still a mystery, and we were both avoiding it right now.) It was a bit of a shock to say the least: We had $40,803 in credit card debt, $32,118 in student loan debt, and $201,847 in home debt. The grand total? $274,768! I calculated how much our minimum payments would pay off, and it was a little over a thousand a month. At this rate I wouldn't be out of debt for 22 years.

In June 2007 I consolidated some of my credit card debts. I also rolled my $10,000 HELOC into it; the variable interest rate was at 11% and the payments didn't encourage me to pay more than the interest each month. Plus it didn't really qualify as home debt; I'd bought furniture and a computer with it. So my credit card debt went up and my home debt went down.

That same month, I dealt with the issue of the England trip we were determined to take the next year. I decided, rather than saving up for it, to add $5,000 to my debt total, then try to pay other, high-interest debts down more aggressively, to the tune of $5,000 extra before our trip. Then we'd at least break even on the trip. I started putting every bit that NT made as a temp toward debt. He got paid weekly, so even though the amounts were variable, at least I could see progress often.

July started out a good month because I completed my first monthly debt-payoff challenge, and NT got his full-time job. We still were getting very little spending money and only putting $500 extra toward debt each month, but I knew that would get better soon.

But the good news didn't last for long. Once NT had confirmed his new job, he felt able to let me in on his finances. He said he couldn't face it before, when he wasn't able to contribute at all.

It turned out he had not checked his account since he'd come to America. He had rental income getting direct-deposited and bills getting directly debited from that account. And he was pretty sure that the rental income was not covering the bills.

We logged in to his account and he was right; he was actually a few pounds away from reaching the limit on his overdraft account. His rental income was about $400 short of covering the minimum bills. His debts included $19,382 of credit debt (on four cards plus the overdraft) and $121,548 in home debt (a main mortgage plus two home-equity loans). We also knew he was going to college soon, and I estimated the tuition for four years would be about $40,000. So I went ahead and added that to his debt in my mind, bringing his total debt to $180,930, and our household total to $457,714.

So, to my rather glum thinking, after about four months of buckling down, I had paid off about $500 above the minimum but accrued $186,000 in debt and a new $400 monthly bill (to cover our minimum bills in England). Actually $450, because it cost $50 to do an international wire transfer. And my little family was nearly a half-million dollars in debt. Suddenly NT's great new job didn't seem like it would make a dent in our financial misery.

Whew! It's crazy even writing it down. Stay tuned for chapter 3, when we begin to claw our way out of the hole.

I've been noticing some new members joining SA blogs recently who are pretty freaked out by their financial situations. I thought it would help if I reintroduced myself and spilled my gruesome financial saga. It's not exactly a success story yet, but I have made some progress and gotten more upbeat about my finances!

If you have your own personal horror stories that have happy endings (or are headed that way), maybe you could share on your own blogs so these new members know they're not alone and that there's a light at the end of the tunnel (and that it's not the proverbial freight train bearing down on them)!

I just pulled my own head out of the sand about my finances 15 months ago. I was in charge of finances for both me and my partner AS. I'd tried off and on to keep a budget and pay down debts with little success over the years, and saving seemed impossible. I would transfer credit card balances around thinking that would help me pay them off faster, but all it would do was encourage us to charge up the first card again.

I was naive about finances and, like many other Americans, assumed that when I earned more I would be able to straighten everything out. Of course our raises would cover cost-of-living increases and little else, so the debt never really went away. Worst of all, even though we were charging on credit cards pretty freely much of the time, I never felt as if we were living well. I never felt prosperous, so the spending wasn't even comforting, and the bills were awful. But I wasn't sure how to stop.

Then my 2nd partner NT moved in. He wanted to decorate the condo and we wanted to let him, because we'd never done anything with it and it wasn't very nice. NT wasn't working at first, and AS had an inconsistent income from a freelance job where the employer kept stringing her along saying she'd hire her full-time soon. Eventually she left that and got a full-time job that also paid for her grad school, so things got a little better. Then NT got his work permit and started getting some temp work.

Still, we were all spending in different directions with no plan, no budget and no one in charge of finances (besides me making sure I paid bills on time, even if it meant dipping into the line of credit on our checking account). And those months with only one steady income had really put us further in the hole. One day in March 2007, I had a scary moment where I realized we were nearing the limit on our line of credit. I did a rough estimate of our monthly income and bills and saw that we only had enough income to cover basic bills yet were all spending what we wanted, whether it was me getting drinks after work, or NT buying furniture and housewares, or AS eating fast food every day for lunch.

I put the brakes on and let the other two know that we had to change our living, fast. I looked at our past month's statements and showed them we spent over $1200 on eating and drinking out. That shocked us all. Then I did a budget and showed them that we barely had enough income to cover bills and groceries, and that we'd have to quit all frivolous spending until we had more income coming in.

There were a few hitches, but generally we all buckled down and stopped spending. It was a huge lifestyle change for all of us. Luckily NT and I already liked to cook, so we were able to get by without going out at all. We would still get a bit of spending money here and there, whenever we had covered all our bills and had any money left over, but it wasn't much. It was kind of embarrassing the rare times we did go out with friends because they could see us discussing whether we could each afford one beer or two, and meanwhile everyone else is ordering three or four drinks plus food. But for the first time I had determination fueled by desperation. I really felt like if we didn't change this time, we were going to go under.

So I had our spending under control, and it wasn't fun but it was working. But there were so many unknowns in my financial world that were lurking around, worrying me. I didn't have a grasp of our total debt; I hadn't calculated it in over a year. And I knew there were some lingering financial activities going on in the UK for NT: I didn't know what they were and sort of assumed he was taking care of them, but I didn't know any of the details yet. And most of all, I knew deep down that just paying the minimums wasn't going to make our debt (however much it was) go away, but I didn't have a plan for paying it down. Also, NT was planning to go to college soon, and we'd already committed to visiting England for his sister's wedding in the future. Those were two big bills that I had no idea how I was going to pay.

How's that for a grim picture? Tune in to the next chapter when I calculate our huge debt totals and nearly have a heart attack!

Our four mortgage payments hit today:
US: $297 to principal
UK #1: $141 to principal
UK #2: $30 to principal
UK #3: $32 to principal
Total: $500 went to principal.

So that's $500 down, $950 to go on my July goal. No progress on my Big-Picture Goal, of course.

Good news: My UK mortgages had already gone down a bit due to an interest reduction. When I looked ahead on my US mortgage, I saw that next month's bill will be about $15 less, because apparently our escrow payment got reduced. Don't know why, it usually goes up, but I'm not complaining! I'm putting a little of the surplus into our education-expenses category and the rest into our travel savings.

I also put about $5 into savings today because AS got some medical reimbursement direct-deposited. I was also able to put about $35 into travel savings yesterday, because NT got a bit of OT pay and I received $5 from a survey company. (We have a lot to raise before our trip in October, so I'm putting every extra cent I can find into that fund.)

The first splurge I got last week but only got to try out recently, because I didn't want to distract AS from her grad school final project. It was Rock Band for Wii! $180--yowch. I'd been steadily accumulating leftover spending money in my sock drawer, but this purchase ate about two-thirds of that savings. Well, I was saving it for something fun, and what a game! You get a "drum set," drumsticks, microphone, guitar/bass, and a whole mess of cheezy and classic songs. We've been loving it so far.

OK, so Thursday night as I was eating a DELICIOUS new meal we'd come up with (marinated portobellos, pan-fried and then broiled; lemon-butter broccoli; and wild rice/white rice pilaf with onions, garlic, dried herbs and fresh thyme--let me know if you want any recipes BTW), my upper left back tooth started hurting. It got steadily worse that night and was throbbing like crazy the next morning. I called my dentists but they don't work on Fri-Sat-Sun. I'm scared of other dentists so I decided to wait it out.

We were having a party at our house Friday night, Saturday we were going to go up to the pool, and Sunday was the Twin Cities GLBT Pride parade/festival. Plus one of our friends was coming from out of town for Pride.

The party wasn't too bad; I explained my problem to people as they came in so they wouldn't think I was slurring from early drunkenness. I was able to taste all the delicious foods we made (homemade breadsticks with homemade marinara dip, trifle, stuffed red potato skins) and bought (matchstick potatoes, raspberry-mustard pretzel dip) if I chewed really, really cautiously on the right side of my mouth. My only drinking during the night was a periodic swish of whiskey over my tooth to help dull the pain.

Saturday it was just as bad, if not worse. AS looked on the Internet and found a dentist open on Saturdays and called to see if they could fit me in. She insisted I go, and both she and NT said they'd chip in their spending money for the bill. (Awww!) So I went and was reminded why I don't like most dentists. It's just hard for people to make you feel really comfortable. Plus this guy, when he couldn't figure out what was wrong, offered to file my teeth down in case it was a clenching problem. I politely declined! He did prescribe penicillin in case it was an infection. The charge was $70, but I noticed something that said there was a 5% discount if you paid in cash, so I asked about it. She had forgotten to take that off! $66.50, and she knocked it down to $66 because I didn't have the exact amount and she didn't have change. She said they'd reimburse if my insurance paid part of it, but we'll see if they bother to follow up. Not sure any of it's covered anyway. NT, AS and I split the cost three ways from our spending money. The prescription cost $10, which I took from our medical category in the budget (getting low, but there was enough for that at least).

Then came my other big splurge. I've been wanting a really great blender for years. Basically it seems you can get an OK blender for pretty cheap ($30-$100), but a really great one's gonna cost you. With our raw-foods cleanse coming up, we could really use one, because we're going to want to juice greens and make smoothies, and a Vitamix can apparently do both, really well.

So again, the three of us pooled together our spending money, pulled $100 from our farm-share savings, $18 from home improvement, and came up with the $429 for a refurbished Vitamix direct from the company, with 7-year warranty.

I'm excited, but I'm down to a few bucks of spending money, which hasn't been the case for a long time. I just have to do without little extras til Friday, which usually isn't that hard anyway.

Pride was fun at first; we watched the parade and hung out with friends. I only spent about $5 of my dwindling money on drinks. Then AS twisted her ankle coming downstairs. Probably due to that and my still-throbbing tooth (and grad-school stress, and alcohol), we had a spat and headed home. I'm sad we didn't get to see our out-of-town friend more, but he usually comes to town twice a year or more, so it'll be OK. (Oh yeah, and we made up, so that's OK too. )

Today I managed to get an appointment with my dentists, the ones I'm not scared of. They confirmed there is nothing noticeably wrong with my tooth and decided to numb me and give that tooth a good scraping and cleaning, because chances are a small particle of food caused the swelling and infection. They said the cleaning plus the penicillin should clear it up. I hope so! I don't know how much this will cost me (they estimated $60), but I do have a small ($75) emergency fund that will cover it if I don't have any other extra money when the bill comes.

Not a great weekend overall, but we have the blender to look forward to! Plus, even though we're low on spending money, I am proud to say that none of the above, not the splurges or the medical emergencies, will be going on credit cards. What would have been second nature for us before is now a thing of the past!!!

So here I am on Monday, tender-gummed, chagrined but excited about our two luxury purchases, and looking forward to the next couple days when some bills hit and I can show some progress on my debt paying.

OK, per mighty Merch (there's no "not so" in my opinion ), here are my thoughts on my Big-Picture Goal, which as most of you know is to pay off all credit cards and personal loans by 12/31/09.

In a perfect scenario I'd be one-quarter done by now. My starting balance was $70,251, so that means I should have paid off $17,563 by now, and have a balance of $52,688.

Instead, to date I've paid off $16,472, and I'm at $53,779.

That means I'm $1,091 behind schedule.

If all stays stable in my life, that number is not alarming, because a debt snowball has you paying off much less at first and then gradually increasing over time. However, I know for a fact that the second half of 2008 is going to be anything but stable:

- In August, AS will officially graduate from her Master's program, and her two deferred student loans will come due. I believe one of them had a monthly payment of about $200, and the other has only a slightly smaller balance (and I have no idea what the interest rate will be).

- In September, NT will (hopefully) be starting school, to finish his B.A. Now I'm hoping to borrow enough to cover the whole thing (and have already assumed $40K of imaginary debt in preparation), but there's a chance there will be expenses that need to be paid upfront.

- In November, our mortgage payments will go up. Whether we let our ARM adjust or we refinance to a fixed-rate loan before that, it's going up either way. I'm not getting a 5.0% loan with no fees and no points, and that's that. How much it will settle at, I have yet to learn.

Luckily there should be offsets to these bumps in our monthly bills:

- When AS has finished her capstone project (before Aug. 1, hopefully), she will begin her job search in earnest. She already has an application at the one place she wants to work more than anything. We're hoping that with her advanced degree she will command a better salary than she does now.

- NT and I should get cost-of-living raises this year. Mine should hit in September, and I can't remember right now when NT said his would be.

- And, if the above isn't enough, I'm hoping to scrape a few bucks off our phone bill in October by switching two of our phones to prepaid. Our grocery/household category could definitely shrink too, though I hope it doesn't come to that. Probably I wouldn't, because our quality of life is good where it is, and the due date on my goal doesn't have any real significance: I wouldn't die if I were a month or two late on finishing it.

So where does that put me in my Big-Picture Goal? Shakily optimistic, I guess.

I started my blog June 21, 2007, according to my sidebar.

Oh well. When I was a car owner, I would usually miss when the odometer rolled over to a number with a lot of zeroes, so I'm not really surprised.

To make up for it, looks like this is going to be a 4-post day, because I'm about to figure my net worth and send out that update.

So, happy belated first blogoversary to me!

Why is it that Mondays are when I have a bunch of random things to blog about? Maybe because I don't think too much about my budget over the weekend; I use downtime at work to do most of my planning, balancing and blogging.

Friday we received word that we're going to have to spend about 180 pounds for a bed in order to get a new tenant for our UK flat. (Don't ask me why; we depend on our management company since we don't live there, so I hope this is really necessary.) That's in addition to all the leasing and management fees coming up, so I was looking at having to eat into our August extra debt repay (we've already set aside all our July extra repay money for this expense).

Then NT said he was almost positive that the biggest expense--450 pounds, or about US$900, for a 999-year lease on the land (again, don't ask)--wouldn't be coming until next year, maybe late next year.

That could potentially mean that we've paid all our credit debt off before it even hits, especially if we throw as much as possible at it. So I've reversed part of my executive decision and am going to only set aside the rest of the money, trusting that we can come up with the $900 closer to the date that we need it.

I'm still going to hold off our July payment to save a $50 fee, and send it all in August. But what this means is that if nothing else sucker-punches us, our August payment will be $250 for July and August UK bills, $1100 for the other lease and rental fees, and a nice $2150 for extra debt repayment! August is looking to be very exciting indeed, if I can just get through the rest of boring June and July. (Boring moneywise; I just need to get out and enjoy the summer and forget about debt repayment for the most part!)

We've been hoping to glom onto a friend's garage sale for awhile now, and finally there's one with a fixed date: Aug. 15-16. Hopefully we'll make enough for a couple small home improvements and to put some more in the travel fund. Now that I've committed mentally to getting our family on two trips per year, I'm going to need to scrap for every extra penny I can, because three adults traveling together gets quite expensive fast! I have to remember to list our futon and loveseat on Craigslist and see if I can get a bit of money for those. (I keep putting it off because I'll have to declutter before I photograph them.)

We were sitting on our balcony yesterday reflecting on what we didn't get done there this year and what we'd like to do next summer. We've decided having some bamboo mats to roll out on the (ugly gray-painted concrete) floor is a priority next year, plus some prettier planters and more creative use of space, possibly with hanging planters and/or trellises. We're considering asking other tenants to let us see what they've done, because the wind on the 18th floor can be murder on plants! We keep having to drag our tomato buckets indoors, so I can't imagine delicate blooms surviving out there. Anyway, there's going to be some cost involved there, but we have plenty of time to save up for it.

All of my money goals, both saving for things and paying off debt, are big dollar amounts, so it's hard to focus sometimes on the smaller bits of money that go in and out of our lives. But I've been making a concentrated effort to make sure I know where those bits go, so I can see the difference frugality makes. I got a direct deposit of $6.88 from half.com from a book sale, and I had a 90-cent surplus in my budget, so I transferred $7.78 into my travel savings.

I have started to-the-penny budgeting, meaning that however far out I extrapolate my budget, I allocate every penny. I've decided I'm not comfortable with a final line of $0, so I've set my goal to keep that at $20. That way I have a bit of a cushion for minor fluctuations in the budget. If I use part of the $20, I will adjust the budget until I get it back.

I guess that's enough for one long, rambling blog post. Happy Monday to anyone who's still reading!

In the past week I've gotten two "comments" on blog entries that ended with links to debt consolidation websites. Grrr...I don't mind deleting the odd one, but I can't help fearing that it will end up like my email, where I end up deleting over 100 spams a day. I suppose if you blog about something like debt reduction, you're touching on one of the three hot topics for spam: sex, money and weight loss.

Lamest goal since I started this trek, might I add. I'm just going to make sure I pay the usual minimum, so my goal is to pay off $1450 by July 31. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm saving all the extra money I usually put toward debt for some upcoming leasing and management fees for our UK rental property.)

So, nothing too exciting. I'm just hoping this doesn't somehow sabotage my mental momentum. I'll keep looking toward August, when, if I'm lucky, I may be able to get my credit card debt under $50K and my home debt under $300K. Those will be exciting milestones, so I'll work extra hard to get there!

Payment posted to my personal loan: $441 to principal. (Warning: gripe follows.) Now, last month I paid the same amount extra, and $480 went to principal. It's a fixed-term loan (meaning if I didn't do anything it would pay off in 5 years, unlike credit cards), so I called them because I don't know how these things work. The CSR let me know that since I'd paid on the 13th last time, less interest had accrued on my balance (interest is added daily, and right now it's at $6 per day). I asked how it was $49 different if only three days had passed, which should be $18. She said she didn't know what the interest per diem had been a month ago, and had know way of checking. How stupid! I'm sure interest didn't go down $10 per day, or else I'll be paying no interest in a month. Maybe I paid even later the month before? I guess they're not allowed to fudge my interest calculations, so I can only assume this is what I signed up for. I'm hoping to get this baby paid off by next August, but now I'm hoping I can do it even sooner, maybe next June!

But I digress...a lot! The good news is that I reached my June goal! Hooray! I wanted to pay off $2800, and I paid $2878.

Also, that means I've got $53,779 to go on my Big-Picture Goal.

Now to set another, even smaller goal for July, and hope that nothing hijacks my planned August comeback!

I got a letter from my mom on Saturday, and there was a $300 check in it! In the letter she explained it: She and my dad had gotten a $1200 stimulus check and decided it would help the economy most in the hands of the "younger generation," so they had divided it between their four daughters. (Boy am I glad I got them Mother's Day and Father's Day presents this year. Usually I'm too lazy/disorganized, and I would've felt guilty about taking their gift if I'd fallen through again this year!)

The $300 is going straight into our travel fund, so it will help us on our trip where we're going to try and squeeze in two visits to my parents' house between sightseeing and other activities.

US$163 went to principal. So that's $2,437 down, $363 to go on my June goal. And $54,220 to go on my Big-Picture Goal.

The final payment for June should hit on Tuesday. July won't be very impressive, but hopefully we'll gain some ground in August.

I think as long as I can get my credit card and personal debt down to $40K by the end of the year, I'll have a good chance of getting rid of it by my goal date.

I've been thinking about the various upcoming fees pertaining to our UK rental property. They'll be coming in sporadically over the next few months, but I hate not knowing where I'll find the money to cover them.

So I've made a decision that's a little painful in terms of my Big-Picture Goal of paying off all credit debt by 12/31/09: I'm going to forgo extra debt payment in July. I'll keep that money in the bank and send it over in August when I resume extra debt repayment. At least that'll save me $50 in fees next month and I can roll that into my August repayment.

So that will put me another month or two behind on my debt snowball. But the peace of mind I get from knowing I have that money socked away for those fees will be worth it. I'm so used to having money allotted for every expense these days, and I'd rather jump the gun a little and delay my debt repayment than lose that feeling of being on top of my finances. Hopefully I will get some windfalls to make up for it, but even if I don't, it's only a month or two difference. I can handle that!

A month or so ago I blogged about how we'd gotten to the point where we pre-spent our entire 15-day grocery/household allotment before that 15-day period even started. It was more annoying than anything else; at least we weren't going any further over budget, but we couldn't seem to cut back enough to get on track. Well, we did some cheap-meal menus for a couple weeks before our vacation, and then spent 10 days away from home during which of course we didn't have to buy any groceries or household supplies.

Fast-forward to today. I was looking at my budget and suddenly realized not only is our June 1-15 grocery balance untouched (and it's already June 10!), but we still have $1.95 left in our May 16-31 allotment!!

This is so great! I've been hoping we can keep enough of a surplus to re-enroll with our CSA (vegetable farm share) in the fall just using leftover grocery money. At this rate I'm pretty sure we can!

It's also great because we're planning to do a mostly-raw diet for about two weeks in July, and I'm not sure if that will be more expensive than our regular menu. Now it will be OK either way.

I suddenly have very little money in the checking account, thanks to ignorance of an important rule. Just temporary, thank goodness!

NT and I got our stimulus check and I deposited it on Wednesday. I took out our portion for spending money and distributed it. On Thursday the deposit went through, and I found a good deal on plane tickets to Virginia this fall, so I went ahead and bought them with the other portion of stimulus money plus a bit from my fun-money savings.

Today I suddenly had $1200 less in available funds! The deposit was there, and it wasn't pending, but it just wasn't showing up in my available balance! I called around for awhile and then finally went to the bank in person with NT. Turns out (all you married people can laugh at me) that we both needed to sign the check, but I didn't know, so I just signed it.

They're mailing me the check, so I can have NT sign it and we can turn it back in to them. Then they'll release the funds. Grr...

We don't have any big bills coming up, luckily, so we just have to keep an eye on household purchases and make sure they stay under $130. Plus, we all have stimulus money in our sock drawers that we could put back in temporarily. I wasn't sure if we'd be OK while at the bank, so I whined (I admit it) about what if I had to dip into the reserve line and got charged fees? I pointed out that the deposit had gone through so I assumed it was OK to spend. The guy was very patient in the face of my shrillness and gave me his card. Which means I could probably get the fees refunded if something happened and I did overdraw somehow.

So really there's no crisis after all. I'm a bit shamefaced that this guy at the bank probably thinks I'm a regular spendthrift paycheck-to-paycheck American--hey, I'm a recovering spendthrift, and I am living paycheck to paycheck--but only because we put almost $2K per month extra toward debt!

It was just a weird coincidence that I found such a good deal on the plane fare that same day the deposit cleared; I expected to keep looking for a few more weeks before I got under $275 apiece. Then I saw a flight for $230 and had to grab it!

Finally I'm getting around to posting some pics from my vacation! I had so many to choose from, so I'll just show a few. I'm not the best photographer, but the locations speak for themselves. Hope you like them!

First, Windsor Castle, the largest castle used as a residence in (Europe? the world? Now I can't remember which):

And the fancy McDonald's across the street (didn't see the queen eating there, though):

Here are some black swans, a famous attraction in Dawlish:

The ruins of an almshouse in Exeter:

Exeter Cathedral:

Not to be outdone by McDonald's, an even fancier Krispy Kreme in Oxford:

One of those fascinating, ornate details you see everywhere you turn in England, especially Oxford:

The Bridge of Sighs in Oxford (forget why it's called that):

A bit of a really wonderful, ancient pub in Oxford called the Turf Tavern...I couldn't capture how charming it is, but I liked the moss on this part of the roof:

I didn't manage to take a photo that really captured the ancient-yet-modern European feel of the places we went. This one sorta gives you an idea, I hope:

Thank goodness it's been slow at work, because I had many accounts to check. Several payments to debt posted:
US mortgage: $296
UK mortgage #1: $128
UK mortgage #2: $28
UK mortgage #3: $28
Sears card: $950 (paid off dishwasher!)
Credit card: $300
Student loan: $63

Total paid off: $1,793. $1,250 went to credit cards! So that's:
$2,274 down, $526 to go on my June goal.
$54,383 to go on my Big-Picture Goal.

Although my Sears card is a payoff, I'm not adding it to the Old Debt Graveyard because I was just leaving the dishwasher on there while I paid toward other, interest-accruing debts. So it's not really part of my old debt that I'm getting rid of. I'm proud to say that I didn't pay a penny of interest on the card, though! I just put my refrigerator on the same card so I could get free delivery, but I've got a payment set up for later this month, so that definitely won't accrue any interest.

I only have two more payments pending this month, and they should cover the rest of my goal. In fact, one of them should have already hit; I'll have NT check tonight when we get home.

I've cheered up a good deal from my recent gloominess about yucky expenses: UK leasing costs, new fridge, laptop repair. I still have to figure out where the UK money is going to come from (it will come from my extra debt repay if I can't find another way, and that's OKAY), but we've got a while (maybe 6 months) to figure that out. But we bought a fridge last night and it was about $150 less than I was afraid of, even with a three-year service contract.

Also, NT used his irresistable British accent on the computer folks and explained they'd fixed the hard drive less than a year ago--and they agreed to do it free, with only a $50 fee for data recovery. We'll also buy an external hard drive for $100, but $150 total is much better than the $450-$550 we initially thought it would be!

So I allotted the rest of the surplus to our July extra debt repay. If AS ends up switching jobs I may have to drop that plan, but it feels good knowing exactly where it will go if we don't need it.

NT got quite a bit of OT pay in his check today: $265! I put that immediately into travel savings. Our trip to England made us realize how important traveling is to all of us, so I'm making sure we save up for a fall vacation.

Our grocery/household budget has finished healing itself (mostly because we took a 10-day break from cooking while overseas), so we treated ourselves to 3 new frying pans ($15 at Target). We haven't had the right sizes for several cooking projects, so this will make cooking much more pleasant. We still have $184 in grocery money to last us through the 31st, so we'll be able to do a big grocery restock this weekend and still be within budget!

And Monday/Tuesday should be exciting, as many payments will hit and I'll be able to report several strides toward my June goal!

Now if my stimulus check is waiting in the mail, it'll be the perfect end to a good couple of money days.

My trip to England is already over! I can't believe it; it seems like it went by in a matter of hours. On the other hand, it feels like I've been away from work/home for years; my head is all dazy and I can't seem to focus on any particular tasks. I know I'll get over it in a couple days! I took some photos and will post those on my blog as soon as we get around to downloading them.

Financially, doing OK. We actually stayed within budget despite some scheduling and itinerary mishaps! On the downside, our laptop crashed within an hour of returning home, so we'll probably have to use some money earmarked for debt and get that repaired. Another fly in the debt-repayment ointment is that our leasing agent in the UK informed us of some upcoming charges regarding the flat we own and rent out. That may slow down my throwing of extra money at the last remaining UK credit card. Darnit! So my 12/31/09 credit card payoff is looking less certain. But not less likely, I hope--for every obstacle we usually see unexpected windfalls as well, so hopefully we'll get some of those in the next 1.5 years.

On the way back they asked if we would volunteer to give up our seats for a day, and we'd get a hotel for the night and $1000 each in travel vouchers ($3000!) We said heck yeah, but they ended up not needing us. I'm glad because we'd have been even more tired and out of it, but at the same time I'm groaning, because that would have covered airfare for our next three vacations!

Our trip coincided with the part of the month where there's not much money coming in or going out, so it was super-easy to catch up on my spreadsheets and everything.

Anyway, I'm still catching up on everyone else's blogs, but I wanted to say "hi" and that it's good to be back on SA.com!

Yes, it looks a little silly to be paying toward my June goal. But that's how I set up my system when I started--once I hit a goal, I start on the next one, even if the month isn't over yet. It works for me, somehow.

Anyway, $481 toward principal on my personal loan, which means:

$481 down, $2,319 to go on my June goal.

$55,633 to go on the Big-Picture Goal.

This will be the last payment til it's actually June, and possibly my last entry before we go to England tomorrow (!!!), though who knows? Maybe I'll have a deep thought between now and takeoff. But if not, take care everyone, and I'll try to post some photos when I get back!

OK, I ran some numbers to figure out how much I think I can pay off between now and June 30. Since I'm going to buy a fridge and hold onto the rest of my budget surplus for the time being, it's my smallest goal in a while. But, looking at my "Past Goals and Results" page, it's still a lot more than the first few months of doing these challenges.

And that goal is...$2,800. I should probably have my first payment hit tomorrow, but then nothing till it's actually June.

Yay! I figured out how to set up an electronic payment for our last UK credit card, and we checked the balance for last month's payment as well. All told, we've paid US$1,449, which sails us nicely past our May goal! It's nice to get it done before going away on our trip.

The May goal was to pay off $4100 of debt, and we paid off $4,305! Our biggest month so far, and probably our biggest for awhile.

It also means we have $56,114 to go on the Big-Picture Goal.

Time to set our June goal, which won't be anywhere near as aggressive!

Another one bites the dust! My wire transfer hit the UK account, so I paid off a small credit card balance. Ordinarily I'd wait for the satisfaction (and certainty) of seeing it post to the account, but I was never able to figure out how to check this one online, and I don't want to wait a month for the paper statement to reach me. So I declare this bill paid off!

$190 to principal.
$2,856 down, $1,244 to go on my May goal.
$57,563 to go on my Big-Picture Goal.

Am ready, willing and able to pay off about US$1290 on another UK credit card, but I need to verify some info before I can set up the payment. The exchange rate was very nice; I got slightly more than 1 British pound per $2! There was a time when I'd only get 90-some pence per $2, so I'm very happy.

AS's $600 stimulus check was direct-deposited on the very day predicted. If only everything the feds attempted was carried out this precisely! I sent it over to the UK, along with $3550 more. This amount should cover:
- Minimum payments on UK bills for April, May and June (about $1000).
- $1000 (500 pounds) extra toward credit card debt, including payoff of a small-balance card.
- Car rental, gas, food and fun during our trip ($2150--think that sounds high? Divide it in half, and then account for driving for 9 days and multiply gas prices by two).

Mine and NT's stimulus check should come via mail near the beginning of June. We paid our taxes by hard-copy because it would cost money to do an electronic payment from our bank account. Nice try. I said it once and I'll say it again; if the government would benefit from me doing things the high-tech way, they'd better by-gosh make it free to do so. Otherwise I'll stick with just paying for a stamp.

Whoops! Got sidetracked. Anyway, we should be getting $1200, and we've decided we want to treat ourselves. $600 is going to fun-money savings (for our autumn trip to Va.) and $600 is getting divvied between the three of us for whatever we like. I may try to save my $200 for a rainy day if I can't think of anything specific; don't want to piddle it away and wonder where it went.

So, I'm afraid Mr. Bush will get his way on 2/3 of the stimulus money coming to my household, even though I think the rebate was a bad idea. But at least I'm putting 1/3 toward debt.

I've been considering it for a few days, and I finally decided today: I'm going to try budgeting to the penny as soon as AS finds her job.

Currently, I just set up a budget for what money we know we need, and there was a bit left over (about $225) that I considered fluff money: Every so often, if I didn't need it for an unexpected expense, I'd put it toward debt, or toward fun-money savings, or build it up gradually for a planned expense (like a trip). But quite often it would go for a medical bill or to buy textbooks.

It's worked perfectly well, but I'm starting to get annoyed that there [i]are[/] still expenses that I don't have money allocated in the budget for. Also, when we get a smaller windfall, like from selling a book on half.com, I just roll it into the general surplus and never get to see [i]exactly[/] how it benefits us.

So I've decided when AS changes jobs and we figure out how much she'll bring in, I'm going to start budgeting to the penny of our minimum paychecks. I'm going to add a regular line item ("envelope" I guess) in my budget spreadsheet for health care and one for education expenses, and I'm going to up my regular contribution to fun-money savings, so that we're more likely to reach our gift and travel budgets in time for the relevant holidays.

That should cover all the things outside our budget that have come up in the past year. I've been socking a bit away for medical expenses in case I couldn't cover them and I have about $75 saved and contribute a few bucks a month. Once I create this health-expense line item, I'm renaming that money "Emergency Fund." There are probably expenses I still can't predict, so that bit of savings could keep us from going off track. When I up the fun-money savings it will automatically increase my contribution to the emergency fund, so it should build up pretty fast.

Unexpected windfalls such as OT pay and eBay sales will go toward debt repayment. (The only exception is our June garage sale, because I've already promised we could use those profits for home improvements.)

If we get raises or AS gets a higher paycheck than at her current job, my next priorities would be: 1. Up the health and education allotments (right now I see $75 per month for both but I'd like it to be $50 apiece). 2. Up our spending money, but as an exercise incentive, so it will encourage us to exercise (rather than decide "woo hoo! extra spending money! now I don't have to exercise!") 3. Increase debt repayment. 4. Increase 401(k) contributions.

Currently I have a budget surplus of $1256.40 through July 15. I'm keeping that there, and we'll use part of it for a new fridge (hopefully our last unsaved-for expense) and the other part will sit as a security blanket during AS's job hunt. If we don't use it all to cover a paycheck gap, I'll put every penny of the remaining surplus toward debt and start fresh with an eye toward maintaining a $0 bottom line at all times.

There! I've published it, so now I'll have to make it happen.

This posted early! Usually it's not till the 9th or 10th.

$63 toward principal. I recently upped my fixed payment from $71 to $75, figuring my budget would never notice the difference and I'd thank myself later.

So that's $2,666 down, $1,434 to go on my May goal.

A bigger payment should happen this week or next. As soon as our first stimulus check arrives, I'm transferring a big chunk of money to the UK, some of it spending money we saved up for our trip and the rest for bills and debt payment. I'll pay off a small UK balance and throw something at the remaining card (which I hope to pay off by October or earlier). Soon as I pay that sucker off, NT's rental income direct deposits will be enough to cover the remaining UK bills, and I can stop transferring money over there at $50 a pop.

I realize I usually only write about my debt payoff goals, so here are some other money-related life updates.

I've been happy to have about a $1200 surplus in my budget, because AS will want to switch jobs soon, and while she'll almost certainly be making as much as or more than she does now, there might be a lag in paychecks and I'd love it to be painless.

But our refrigerator sprung another mysterious "leak." It does this thing where periodically a mysterious puddle of water appears in front of it, usually in one place. Yesterday it showed up in two places. NT's tried to find a way to fix it but we can't even tell what's wrong. I think it's the seals on the doors, but whatever it is, I don't feel like it's worth trying to get repaired. It's an old fridge, we don't like its setup (side by side doors), it's insanely loud (humming and rattling), and we knew we'd have to replace it anyway. AS and I got off easy for the first 4-odd years we lived in this condo; the only repairs we had to pay for were a new rubber stopper in the toilet tank and a fan replacement in the heating/AC unit.

So, we'll be using about half our surplus to get a new fridge. Worst-case scenario, we cut back on spending money and a couple other luxuries if there's a gap in paychecks. NT gets a fair amount of OT pay most months, so it may not even come to that. I was going to put this surplus toward debt if we didn't use it, but I still will, just not as much.

In other news, the trip to England is coming soon. Finally! That's the only bad part of reserving tickets early, the waiting and waiting. The good part is that prices are only going up on airfare, so we probably did OK even though $900+ per person didn't feel like a bargain. We leave next Thursday. Dave Ramsey on his TV show last night was talking about taking a vacation that doesn't follow you home, and this will be the first vacation since college that is fully paid-for in advance! We can't wait to see friends and family and maybe do a little sightseeing. We've been watching a lot of antique-auction shows on BBC America and would love to visit an auction house while we're there, just to watch in person!

In other other news, we had friends over yesterday for brunch, and they brought their adorable sons. I'm afraid they made my parenting urge even worse! Well, I've promised myself I can start trying as soon as we're credit-card debt free, so that will push me even harder to pay off this debt early. I've decided to talk to my doctor at my next physical (December), to see if it's feasible and safe for me to try. I have a great big scar across my belly that doesn't seem like it would be flexible, and I've had a broken pelvis (about 12 years ago), but I'm hoping it's OK. It's not going to break my heart if I can't have my own kid, but it's an experience I don't want to miss if I don't have to!