December 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $10,010.69 Paid

by | Jan 4, 2019

Welcome to my debt payoff update for December 2018! In these updates, I detail our progress on our debt payments for the month and highlight any updates in our financial situation.

I started this site to hold Mr. TMG and me accountable in our debt payoff journey. I also want to inspire and encourage others who are in debt (especially if you owe six figures like we do) by showing everyone that debt doesn’t have to be forever.

Whatever your numbers, I hope you find some inspiration in our story.

Let’s get to it!

Debt Payments

Here is a breakdown of all of our payments in December:

Mortgage: $1,120.05
FedLoan: $8,890.64

Steadily chipping away at that med school loan. 🙂

Check out our previous debt payoff updates below to see our journey:

I mentioned here that we’re generally following the debt snowball method, which has been working out really well for us. Mr. TMG also got a second job for a while, which sucked but helped accelerate our debt snowball.

Related: 21 Side Hustles You Can Start Today

We put any other extra or out-of-the-ordinary money, such as tax refunds, directly on our loans. (Check out the updates from February and March 2018, where we got thousands of dollars back on our tax refund.)

All of these steps have helped us get to where we are today!

Updates

We’re still working our zero-based budget. With a zero-based budget, you budget every single dollar of your income in a given month. Your budgeted income minus your budgeted expenses should equal zero. We balance our budget at the end of the month and make our extra debt payment at that time.

This month’s budget included a Christmas trip to Nashville with our family, which I mentioned in my last post.

In addition to stuffing our faces with Hattie B’s famous hot chicken and Slim & Husky’s pizza, we saw a Cirque show, visited an exhibit of scenes from How the Grinch Stole Christmas completely made of ice, and did a scavenger hunt around Opry Mills Mall. Needless to say Little TMG enjoyed every bit of it.

We also slept in, lounged around our Airbnb, and generally relaxed. The adults enjoyed those parts even more. 🙂

Our next big expense will be furniture and other items for Baby TMG. Only 8 weeks to go.

HOW SWAY?!

Remaining Balances

When we set out to pay off our debt and realized we had over $670,000, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

We still have a long way to go, but we’ve made so much progress just in the last year.

Here’s where we were in January 2018:

We were one year into our journey and $639,777.80 in debt.

Here’s where we stand currently:

Grand Total: $549,643.55 remaining

In 2017, we paid off almost $50k. In 2018, we made almost a $100k dent in our debt! If we keep up this trend, maybe this year, we can do $150k. (Gotta speak it into existence…)

Having the 8th wonder of the world—aka interest—working against you is a beast. The total amount of payments we made in 2018 equals $115,114.82. In other words, we paid over $15k in the last year just for the privilege of paying this money back.

That’s definitely motivation to keep paying this debt off as quickly as we can. When we get to the other side, these banks are going to be paying us interest.

How did you do with your financial goals last month? Did you make the kind of progress you wanted to?

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