August 2012 Debt Update

Well, at this point probably nobody cares about our debt progress, but I'm trying to keep track of it for the purpose of looking back when we become debt-free, and when people ask how we did it, I can say, hey, I have a whole string of blog entries labeled "debt"--you should go look at those.  Or something.

Anyway, July was pretty much a bust.  We made minimum payments on students loans, and that was about it.  Still, progress is progress, right?


 Second 10K Chunk, started 5/1/12
  Fundraising Thermometer

This slow-down in progress was 100% my fault.  You see, a cash budget is only good if you don't lose the cash.  The night before we left to go see my family in Texas,  I ran to Walmart--twice--to get some last minute items.  On one of the trips, it was raining when I exited the store, and when I got to the car after a quick jog, my purse was--forgive me for this Southern term--tumped over.  I glanced back up the row and didn't see that anything had fallen out, and I went home.  The next morning we got on the road and drove--and at some point during our trip to Texas, I realized that the cash was missing, and that I hadn't put the cash in the envelope system, so it could be anywhere.  Once we unpacked the car, I looked for it--even took everything out of the car and vacuumed and cleaned while in my parents' driveway.  Not there.  I dumped out my purse and cleaned it out.  Not there.  I emptied the trunk.  Not there.

When we returned to Alabama, I went into Walmart as a last resort, knowing that if it had fallen out in the parking lot, it was long gone.  The manager went into the office to look if someone had turned it in.  Not there.  Surprise, surprise.  So we spent the month surviving without our cash, which meant that any "extra" money that would ordinarily go to our loans, went to making up for me losing the money.

Moral of the story:  Put cash in designated envelopes and don't lose it!!  Lesson learned the hard way.

This month coming up is a weird months since Eli is spending half the month at annual training for the National Guard and the other half of the month at his civilian job, so cash flow will be forthcoming, but not regular.  We'll make minimum payments again, and will break the halfway point on debt thermometer #2 with just that.  Hopefully we will do more, but it will come at the last minute.

Cheers.