Progress?

Well folks, it's been about a year since the last substantial update, and we have been extremely busy pushing through a multitude of problems.  While we have paid down on all of our debt across the board, it feels like there hasn't been much movement (which is why the debt snowball is so psychologically awesome).

After plowing through our smaller debts last year, we were left with larger ones with long pay-down timelines.  Over the past year, however, we have made great strides to reduce all of them, and now we're just about to the point of making huge gains and cascading payments through the debts once again.  All I have to say is you really need to push through the pain and make this happen.

I think this is the point that most people throw up their hands and say "well, I tried, I can't make it work" and then give up -- going back to the way things used to be.  If you can stay motivated, it is very much worth it to keep pushing.  How does one do that you ask?  Well, I tried to gamify paying down debt.  I did it by making a spreadsheet and giving myself "achievements" for hitting certain levels of debt, and giving myself a nice carrot to run to after I made it through the sprint.  What that carrot is will be different for everyone, but find something that motivates you and push for it.

Among the setbacks, most notably we have continued to have large medical expenses and our van was totaled.  We had insurance, but the replacement value wasn't enough to get something in good shape, so we had to finance.  The van is our primary vehicle, and it needs to be reliable. I'm driving a 15 year old Eclipse now, and we couldn't risk having two cars that may or may not work :).

Regardless of that, we have been able to recoup the car payment by adjusting lifestyle and budget -- so we have the liquid funds like we did before the accident.  What pumps me up is that we will have even MORE liquid funds available after the van is paid off than before we bought it.

I'm excited to be able to actually post payoff goals here in the coming months, rather than sitting on my hands for year.  Here's to a more productive 6 months!