I have posted the amount that we have paid off in the past 4 years using the snowball method of debt reduction. Well I would love to exchange ideas with any and everyone on your own personal system for paying off debts. I'll go into a quick overview of how we did it and then we'll break it down a bit later. BUT I do want to make note of just where my info came from. I didn't dream this system up. About 10 yrs. ago we were in a business that suggested a book for each of us to read. This book was called "Rapid Debt Reduction Strategies" and was written by John Avanzini. Although a lot of the book is dry, finance mumbo jumbo there was a good bit about the snowball method. THIS was the method that we chose and it has worked wonders for our financial situation. I really want to emphasize that this is NOT of my own brainstorming.... .
We took the author's advice and added up all of our debt.
The entire bill was to be looked at in "one lump sum" to be reckoned with. That's just what we did. At first we added $300 to dd's car payment of $267. When we payed that debt off we rolled over the $300+$267 for a total of $567 EXTRA dollars to pay on ds's car. Now honestly I can't remember the numbers to be exact but at the end we are now paying over $3000/per month on debt. From simply making the payments we were already making and continued to make after the payment (per se) was gone. The concept is this: You're already making these payments and if you keep it up, you won't miss the money and the debt will be paid back SOOOOooooooo much faster. It REALLY works. Below I will list the debts that we have paid off for the total posted in the prev. post.
Dd#1's Car
Ds's Car
Dh's pickup
Home improvement Loan
Dd#2's Car
My Car
House
The house was paid off 8 years early! Dd#2's car was paid off almost a year early and so on. We are not completely debt free yet, but we have about 9 months more to go and we will be down to "only" our office and business warehouse mortgage. That is a 20 yr. mortgage that we will be paying off in 3 years. If you've ever doubted whether or not you could get out of debt, DON'T. It only takes committment, organization and determination on your part. You can start with as little as $25 extra a month and before long it will "snowball" into MUCH more.
Anyone interested in a challenge?
Oh, b.t.w., we did all of the above while putting 3 kids through college (paying ourselves no loans), and living a frugal lifestyle. It wasn't easy, we ate lots of beans, but it surely can be done.
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Want to talk about debt reduction?
We do some of the same things I hope to be debt free long before the intrest people want us to be!
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