Almost done with FPU

**kmonokwe** · 04-20-2009, 06:33 PM

Tonight is our last FPU class - I'm looking forward to hearing about giving! I'm not the most generous person, and I wish I were. I'm usually too concerned about penny-pinching to be overly generous. I'm looking forward to getting better and better at this as we progress through the Baby Steps!

Anyway, I just wanted to post and celebrate the accomplishment. Throughout the course of the 13 (it was actually 15 weeks for us, due to bad weather) weeks, we paid off $3344.60. That number looks so small, but it was a huge deal for us! When we started out, my minimum payments were $159, and we were paying $250. We were proud of ourselves for making nearly a double payment each month, working with a relatively small income. When I crunched the numbers and discovered how long it was going to take us to clear up a measly $14.5k at $250/month, a fire was lit under my butt. After bumping it up to $350, I didn't think I could eek any more out of the budget. Over the last few months, as we've been going through FPU and I've been spending more and more time here at Frugal Village, our utilities have gone down, I've saved on groceries, we've pared down our unnecessary spending, and I've picked up a couple of extra piano students, and we're now sending $772 each month, budgeted! We're on track to be all done with Sallie Mae by April of 2010. That is still much longer than I wanted it to be, but at the moment, that's the ticket. DH has graciously given every cent of his profit sharing each quarter, and every extra dollar that we can rake in goes straight to Sallie.

It seems like a long way to go before we finish BS2, and so much longer before we can get to BS7, but I am feeling so powerful right now, knowing that we have control of our future! It is a remarkable feeling to know that $1500 is sitting in the bank in case of emergency, and that if something goes wrong, we could revert to minimum payments and have an extra $600 each month. Not that we will, except in dire circumstances, but I feel so secure just knowing that!

I was a little bit of a skeptic at first, slightly put off by Dave's sometimes harsh mannerisms, but I am constantly surprised (not that I should be, at this point!) at what a common sense, "no, duh?", there-is-no-other-way sense there is to everything that comes out of his mouth, regarding personal finances. Its changing our lives, and changing our future, and I just want to celebrate!!!