The previous entry was my beginning numbers at the end of October, after I stumbled onto Dave Ramsey and ordered his "Total Money Makeover" and FPU on CD...I wanted to use this blog to update my progress over the past 4 months because I think it is encouraging to read other's stories and I always go to their first entries to see where they started.

-So the truth is-
-well, it's not quite half a million, but it's pretty darn close.
-I have been charging my TV and phone bill on CC's because there is just not enough money left at the end of the month.
-I have been making the banks a ton on late charges and overdraft fees.
-the Rental/Farm loan was a CONsodilation that paid CC debt off once before...ugh
-The 72 Acre Farm loan was also a CONsolidation of the original farm loan and an unsecured LOC with the purpose of buying cattle that was often used for "emergencies"...double ugh

The farm debt of Farm Supply, 10 Acre Farm and 72 Acre Farm and Tractor with 5880 balance are all Annual Payment loans. The Farm Supply bill will be paid in early Jan 2013 with proceeds from crop sales. The 10 Acre Farm note has an approximate payment of $2500 due Jan 18. The Tractor payment is due in June with close to a $3k pmt so two pmts to go there. The stickler is the big loan...It has to go through renewal every two years in October. This year was our renewal year. The pmt is a little over 16k, which if you do the math, you would find it would take eons to pay it off...lol. This was a mistake by the bank when they originally consolidated it. They saw the mistake this year when we made our payment and only around 1400 went to principal. They wanted to double our payment. There was no possible way with our debt load that we could do that so luckily, they left it as it was. So the 2 year goal for farm debt is to get the two smaller loans paid off before the October 2014 renewal and hopefully be in a position to refinance this loan with USDA-FSA with a much smaller interest rate.

My hubby's dream is to be able to retire to farming full time when he is 50...he is 46. If everything goes as planned, we are looking at paying everything off except the 72 acre farm by sometime late in 2018, so he might have to wait until 51, but that's pretty close. I just want to be debt free and have something to leave to my kids and grandkids.

So in November, we began our journey.
I started making a snowball...a very small one; but a snowball nonetheless. The first month, of course, I would pay off the Hospital bill that I have been paying on since 2009. Would have paid it off anyway in November, but that would be my first snowball amount...31.75 to pay on the next "highest interest" loan in December. I just couldn't make myself do it smallest balance to largest. I still paid part of the phone and tv bills on credit realizing that the truck will be paid off soon and that is going to free up a little over 500 a month that will not go into the snowball because the budget is just way too tight right now. Also because I started watching my bank account every day and really paying attention to auto debits so that we get out of LC and OD land...We have paid more than enough overdraft fees and late charges the last 18 months to cover the TV and phone bills...I have been LAZY when it came to our finances and there is absolutely no excuse...