Sunday, February 03, 2008

Wow...3 posts in one day! This one is about...2008 plans!

Okay. I realized I've been unusually verbose today in here! But...I thought of something else I wanted to get down.

We are on target to paying OFF the smaller of the BECC's in August. That would be amazingly cool. It's not even really "hoping" - we're on track for it.

I'll be getting close to $1000 in curriculum work. Add in random ebay sales. And summer school checks. Even with buying a new bed (haven't gone in to that story at all...) and finding money in the budget for a car payment, we should be able to get rid of the smaller BECC (about $3200 right now) with the summer school check in late July.

That would free up about $140 a month to go into the snowball, or just loosen the budget a little bit after we tighten it for the car payment. It depends on how poorly we adjust to the car payment budgeting process...I'm hopeful on that, but it won't be easy.

Then, we tackle the larger BECC - that booger is at about $9500 right now. It makes my tummy tighten just to think about how long we've been paying on that one, and how much interest we've paid them, and how much longer it will take to get them off our backs. But...one step at a time, right?

Our order of payoffs, which I know make very little Dave Ramsey sense:
Smaller BECC: $3200
Bigger BECC: $9500
Dryer: $400
Car: $10,000
VA: $1000.
Student Loans: $60,000 and probably rising as I'm returning to school for my doctorate next spring.

There is a reason we chose this order, and it's a simple one: The bigger BECC has a much higher interest rate than any of the others, and VA doesn't bother us about what we owe them (medical) as long as we throw them something every once in awhile. They do seize part of our federal return, but I can live with that. We do owe them the money, after all. After the BECC's are paid off, we can increase what we send them to $80, which would at least keep us even (it is $10 per med per month, and dh is on 8 meds). Then we could divide up some other money coming in to pay down the balance. But.. the BECC's need to be done first.

It is absolutely amazing to think that we might have the smaller BECC paid off in a few months. That's been hanging over our heads for over 7 years. The bigger one is over 9 years old. Whew.

I soooo want them gone.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Kris, with the lower mortgage rates, any chance you could refinance and save some money? This is what we're looking into right now. :)