1. I Used Our Credit Card
2. I Didn't Pay Attention To Our Finances
3. I Didn't Pay As Much As Planned To Our Debts (Debt Snowball)
When I examined this category further I was pleasantly surprised that I hadn't done as badly as I first thought.
At first glance, I looked at how much we had paid to our HEL (Home Equity Line of Credit) and I saw that we had not paid more than $200 for most months. This had put me in a big panic because I knew that our target snowball payment for debts has always been at least $1,100 for every month. I was shocked to think we had been underpaying by about $900 every month. I thought to myself "how can I even admit this?". Then I remembered that we only recently paid off our last credit card. Before that we were supposed to only pay $200 to the HEL and the other $900+ was to the credit card. This made me feel MUCH better.
Then I actually added up all the figures (see below). What I found out (to my happy surprise) is that we actually paid more than we had planned to debt for every month except June. And even with the June shortfall (that I tried to make up for in July) - when you add all the debt payments for the year, we ended up paying $975 more than we had budgeted for.
Now, as outlined in #1, we did make some unplanned charges, but overall I am happy that at least in this category we didn't do too badly.
ACTUAL DEBT PAYMENTS
Aug - $1,272 CC + $120 HEL = $1,392
July - $4,000 HEL + $120 HEL = $4,120
June - $26 CC = $26
May - $362 CC + $200 HEL + $10 CC + $6 CC + $79 CC + $10 CC = $667
Apr - $1,889 CC + $200 HEL + $109 CC = $2,198
Mar - $22 CC + $159 CC + $38 CC + $53 CC + $900 CC + $200 HEL = $1,372
Feb - $402 CC + $500 CC + $160 CC + $200 HEL = $1,262
Jan - $200 HEL + $907 CC + $72 CC + $200 CC + $190 CC = $1,569
BUDGET/ACTUAL COMPARISON (Debt Payments)
July - $2,850/$4,120 = + $1,270
June - $1,800/$26 = - $1,774
May - $200/$667 = + $467
Apr - $2,089/$2,198 = + $109
Mar - $1,100/$1,372 = + $272
Feb - $1,100/$1,262 = + $162
Jan - $1,100/$1,569 = + $469
Overall = + $975
Posts
