OMGOSH! It comes to a grand total of.......(drumroll please!)

$157,487.35!!!
Wow! I knew we had come a long way, but I didn't realize it was THAT much!
Anyone else used the snowball method of paying down debt?
I would love to hear your stories.......
More to come on this subject.

I haven't done the snowball challenge before but I have to say......way to go to you!! Great job - that is awesome!

WOW Lisa, I can't wait to hear how you did it!! WTG :fdance:

All I can say is WOW too!!!!:hurray: Good for you, that must have take much determination and perserverance!! Awesome job!!:clap: :clap: :grwave: :grball:

That's how we paid off our debts too. :D

Unbelieveable! You must be so proud! That's awesome! It's hard to even fathom that amount of money, and you paid it all off! Good for you!

Wow! Congratulations! Dh and I started snowballing our debt last month, and plan on continuing to do so. I felt so good paying more than the minimum payment.

Very impressive Lisa! I can't wait to hear more about it!!

Wow ! Give me details please ......... That is impressive !!!!! Congrats !!!!!!!!!

Wow! Congratualtions. :thumb: Pam, good for you too! :thumb: Would either of you share how you did it? :)

I read your other post first but I don't remember you putting the actual total # in that one.... WTG!!! Woohoo!! Happy-dancing for you!!

I've posted it before but can't remember where it is so I'll copy and paste from a PM I sent another member:


I wish I could remember what post I put my story in but I can't. So I'll give you the short story, which I apologize for now will be long. My dh has always paid the bills. I've always kept the checkbook balanced. At the end of 1999 I really started to pay attention to what checks were going out. I guess before that I just tried to ignore it. Well I decided to put it all together and see just how much trouble we'd gotten ourselves into. I sat down and called each credit card company for a balance and the interest rate. When I totaled it all out we were 35K in debt. I felt so sick. Hubby never realized how bad it was either. So I called the CC companies and asked them to lower our interest rates. They wouldn't do it since we'd never been behind on payments and weren't on the edge of bankruptcy. So we ended up putting four of our accounts with Ameridebt just to be able to get the interest rate down. We didn't want to but the CC companies would not work with us so we had to. We then started by paying off our lowest balance. Once it was paid it's minimum payment amount was added to the next lowest balance along with that accounts regular minimum payment. If we had any extra money we would lump that in to. It was great to see accounts getting paid off. It's called the snowball affect. By Dec of 2002 we had paid our accounts down to $20K. I closed my home business in Mar2002 but we still continued our repayment plan with just my dh's income. Money got really tight but we kept chugging along. Then in Dec my dh received a letter from the Air Force with an option to take a lump sum payment of $30K that would affect his retirement by a small percentage depending on how many years he ends up serving. We looked at the amount of compund interest on the CC's compared to the 1-4% he'll lose off his retirement check and opted to take the money. Well after taxes we got just enough to pay off all our credit cards. YIPPEE! So we are out of debt 2-3 years earlier than we thought we'd ever be. We have been married 15 years and of those 15 years we have been in debt for 13 of them. It's great to finally have that curse lifted off of us. I am now in the process of learning the Fair Credit Reporting Act so that I can get our credit reports clear of any negative information and we can get our perfect credit rating back. The 4 creditors we had under Ameridebt filed negative reports on us. So while I do that I want to encourage others to set up a debt repayment plan and get out of debt too.

We haven't paid off nearly as much as PR.:) But no matter how much a person owes there is light at the end of the tunnel. :)

An example to try and explain the snowball effect. In this example I'll use 3 cards

Card #1 has a minimum payment of $50 and has the lowest balance of all three cards.

Card #2 has a minimum payment of $30 and has the next lowest balance

Card #3 has a minimum payment of $100 and has the highest balance.

To start you need to figure out how much extra you can send to Card#1 along with it's minimum payment of $50. As soon as this card is paid off you move that $50 over to card #2. So on card #2 you are now paying $80 a month. Once card #2 is paid off you send Card #1's $50 plus card #2's $30 plus card #3's $100 for a total of $180 a month. It's called the snowball effect because the amount grows and grows with each account that is paid off. You aren't having to come up with more money to pay unless you want to. Your outgoing money remains the same until all your cards are paid off. I hope I explained that well. :) I learned this method from mary Hunt's books and Dave Ramsey's book.

That's the principle behind the snowball method exactly...you keep paying what you were ALREADY paying till it's ALL gone. No exceptions.....it sure would be easy to say "oh look, we've got an extra $50 to blow" and then blow it. BUT you keep doing the snowball and as it gets bigger things get paid off quicker and it's soooooo encouraging.

WTG!:D WE use the snowball method.We've paid off $20,000 off this way last year.(the first year we started)