$20k paid since May!!!

16k car loan – gone

4k stupid (I mean student) loan – gone

12k stupid (I mean student) loan – in progress

We sold the car for what the loan was and paid it off, bye bye car payment. This car payment was a huge burden on our young family and was difficult to shoulder every month. When we first got the CR-V we thought we needed it for our family, its amazing how we were able to justify this huge purchase that we really could not afford since Kristi would not be working. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that I look around on craigslist I see many many cars that are drivable and wouldn’t put us in the poor house. That being said having only one car is not without difficulties such as the pick up drop off schedule is different each day by a few minutes here and there. Luckily I have a flexible job in that respect, and being there past 5 is actually nice because there are fewer emails!!

The biggest change we have really made are that we stay out of malls, target, best buy, baby’s R Us…and all of the other stores unless we absolutely need something. Before we spent time wandering the aisles aimlessly and putting this and that into our cart, by the time we hit the register it was a $75 - $100 bill and oops we didn’t really need all of this stuff. Now we rarely venture into these stores unless there is a purpose and we have been paying cash for everything mostly not even using debit card except for gas. Small changes make a big difference.

Another big change was we stayed out of restaurants except for special occasions. We had been going out to eat 3+ times per week and one month we spent close to $500 on eating at restaurants. Wow that is a huge number, now we spend less than about $75 on going out to eat. We probably go out to eat or fast food less than 5 times per month. Well we have a long way to go still, but we will get there eventually. By the time it’s all said and done we will have an extra $1k to put towards things that really matter.