February 2009 Month End

I think this is the latest I've ever done a month end review. We have been out of town for a couple days. The in-laws have a timeshare so we had an inexpensive 4 day vacation. It only cost us two tanks of gas and two inexpensive meals out and a family vacation for four was had! Thank you in-laws!

And now to get down to business. February was a good month debt and savings wise. Debt went down and savings went up. See? A good month! We did pretty well on our spending too. We came in very close to our budget. Always a good thing! Here are our details for this month:

Debts:

HELOC: $3,990.94 (-$1,677.02) - A nice healthy budget line item plus $400 in budget "extra" plus $160.29 in snowflakes make for a nice reduction this month in our HELOC balance. We're under $4K now! If we continue to have decent months, we should have the HELOC paid off in May. That would be awesome! I already have $1153.15 earmarked for the HELOC for March. Any more snowflakes that come in will go directly to this, of course. We're getting so close!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $2,023.98 (+5.17) - We earned a bit less interest this month than last month. The high interest online savings account is a bit of an oxymoron right now. It's still my favorite spot though to stash away my emergency cash. Come June or July and this will start to grow! (knock on wood!)

Short Term Savings: $242.73 (-3.67) - We deposited our monthly $50 contribution and then took $53.70 right back out! That money went to our family outing with the Christmas money left over from my dad. We took he and his fiance and our family to our local Children's Museum. The $53.70 covered the cost of our admissions. It was a fun afternoon and of course he had to take us out to dinner that night as well. A whole day of entertainment together - a great way to spend the remainder of our gift money, if you ask me!

Travel Fund: $420.26 (+20.64) - Our newly re-labeled travel fund had a small increase this month. I can't wait to have enough in here to actually do some traveling!

Christmas Savings: $330.63 (+0.52) - Sitting tight here with the Christmas cash. I'll put another $500 or so in this account before December. For now though all extra money is going to the HELOC so this sits dormant for now.



Our NCN chart went from 79.61% to 85.64% this month. Another great month! We smashed that 80% mark and then some! Less than 15% of our original debt is left. We've paid almost $24K in a year in a half. Our monthly minimum debt payment is $100. We have made huge improvements to our financial life. I'm so glad we started this debt marathon when we did. If you're wondering how to start or if it seems overwhelming all I can say is this - do it. Start. Go. You will not be sorry. If you need to, start small. Send a bit of an overpayment to the credit cards. Sock away a bit into an emergency fund. Just do it. Set up a budget, track your money and watch it work for you.

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