Savings!

Huzzah! Just this month we got our auto-transfer set up from our checking to our savings. This will really help my peace of mind as we continue on our journey to financial freedom. We've been living frugally and not spending excess, but we haven't been doing what we've said we would do with the excess. It's just sort of been sitting there (eek, I hated writing that).

So, this month, we set up our auto-transfer. This is to help us save for our next car and to save for Christmas (LOTS of cooking and traveling and some gifts. Extra expenses in general we are trying to plan for). For now, those are our only two savings goals. We already have $650 saved up for our next car.

I also just paid my first big chunk towards my awful student loan debt. We are $1,400 less in the hole than we were an hour ago--yes!

Now, it won't be quite so sporadic. We have it on the calendar that every month, we are going to sit down and pay as much as possible from our checking towards our loans. We have a rule that we will never dip below $200 in our checking to pay the debt. Every month, we will probably go down to $200-300 (our electric bill falls at the same time as our scheduled loan payoff, so we leave room for that as well) and use the rest to pay off debt.

I am feeling more positive about paying down our loans now that we have a set schedule to do it on. I am excited to start to see the balance due continue to drop every month! I am hoping to be paying $500-700 per month toward debt. Just a few months ago, we were paying $450 just in minimums, but with paying off a few smaller loans and putting our school loans in deferment (which, even though it didn't lower the interest rate, somehow lowered how much was going towards interest... weird), we will be able to put more and more towards the principle.

I'm beat, and my hubby just got home from work, so it's time to get off the computer!