As I mentioned in my last post, I put together a spreadsheet listing our debts, a quickie budget, grocery expenses, and a debt payoff plan. It is in no way a done deal because I'm working on preliminary income figures.
Also, I used the minimum payoff amount available so the payoff dates may be better than the spreadsheet indicates. As a matter of fact, I've already knocked off 1 month from my entire savings/payoff plan!
We started out owing $177,273.30 (credit card, student loans, heloc, and mortgage) and we need to re-save $1,097.22 of our emergency fund. We are on track for the emergency fund and should have that completed by the middle of April. We had some extra money come in that we didn't need so I put it towards the credit card lowering our total owed to about $177,023.70 (it's actually less, but I rounded the credit card up for minor use).
My plan is to re-save the emergency fund first, then move on to the credit card. That should take us through October 2011. I'm starting out with $697.48 per month as the extra debt payoff.
My student loans do not become due until November so I'll be saving up the payment through the summer. By the time they are due, I should be able to pay off the smallest 2 of the 8 student loans. I'll consolidate the remaining 6 loans and that total should be paid off by July 2013 depending on the monthly payment. I calculated the payment to be about $240.82 per month, then added in the extra $697.48 for a total monthly payment of $938.30. The original monthly payment could be more or less and that could change how long it takes to pay it off.
The next item on my payoff plan is the heloc. That's where I've reduced the payoff time by one month with a complete payoff by July 2016. This may depend on some other things we could be doing with our house and mortgage so we'll have to see how that goes to determine how the heloc payoff will really go. But for now I will continue to pay an additional $190 a month, which reduces the amount by $5,510, then in July 2013 I will add the $938.30 extra I've been using towards the other debts to pay this one down for a total of $1128.30 per month.
The mortgage is part of the total balance, but is not on the payoff plan as yet. We have to wait and see how that will work out with our other plan that I'll talk about another day.
The other variables in this plan are my husband's income, any income I may make, the extra money showing in my budget, and other incidentals. Right now I'm working with what I think we will be getting from my husband's income. So far we've only received one 1/2 check with the w-4 showing single, zero. The next check will include a completed w-4, but no deductions other than taxes. By May we should have a normal check with insurance, 401K deductions, and taxes taken out. That will be when I can finalize things a bit more.
I may start substituting next school year, which could bring in some extra money to go towards our debt payoff. Since I don't know how many days I'll be working, or whether the school district will still be accepting new substitutes, I haven't included this into the payoff plan yet.
I also have $704.23 left over after my quickie budget plan. I've subtracted out bills, savings, groceries, and extra debt payoff. The rest is what we will use for all the other things we buy, need, want, use, etc. Any thing left over by the next month will go to pay down the debt even more. I don't want to say it's our spending money because I bet we usually won't use that much extra in a month. Only if we have some sort of extra expense. So I expect most of it will go towards debt.
Any number of things could happen to mess up my plan...or make it better! Those are my incidentals. Couldn't say what they'll be yet, but I can guarantee something will show up one way or another!
