Thursday, July 31, 2008

$10,530 to $3,800 by December 31, 2008

I was lucky enough to find a blog recently called SmallNotebook where the author wrote about a "no spend month". The author and her family chose only to spend $250 for the month of July. Read about it in her blog, its a great story!

This blog 1. got me thinking and 2. inspired me. I have been wanting so badly to pay off my car. I keep wanting a 'quick fix' where I come into..oh I don't know lets say $10,350 after taxes, which would allow me to pay off my 2005 mazda 6. I still love this car, I have no plans of getting rid of it. I just want it paid off!

After reading the blog I decided to make August my no spend month. I would cut out a little here and a little there and only spend $140 on the extra "stuff" for the month. Its just me, so its a little easier for me to control my spending.

I started calculating further and crunching the numbers. When I was done, I calculated I could pay off $6,550 by December 2008. WHAT??? I did the math again. And again. I could not believe this! By the end of this year I could have a HUGE portion of my car paid off. AND still have a decent amount of money in savings.

How did I do this you might ask? Well it all started with cutting a little here and a little there. I had recently canceled a monthly membership that was costing me $100. I got an offer in the mail to switch my cable/internet/phone that will save me $50 a month. I cut $20 a week off the groceries and spending cash. I paused my savings and will be putting all that extra money into paying off the car (I am only doing this because I feel like I have enough in savings that will allow me to do so). And the list goes on.... I do not feel like any of these changes are so drastic that they will cause me to fail. For me this was about taking a few dollars here and there and before long all those few dollars started to add up.

So this is the challenge I have set for myself for the rest of 2008. I won't be eating out much. I won't be buying fun items on Etsy. I won't be taking extra trips to target. And guess what, IT WILL BE SO WORTH IT!!! My goal is to have the car paid off by March 2009. 14 months early. I am excited and hopefully and will be so dang glad when I have a clear car title!!!!!!!