Sorry for the delay on the December update for our Financial Peace process!

God has definitely humbled me this month. I was wondering how I was going to not go overboard buying for people because I love to buy gifts. Turns out I had no problems in that area. I kid you not we BARELY had enough money to pay our bills this month. BARELY! This was a new feeling to me because I’ve always had money.Not that God just didn’t want us to have money, but he surely wanted to teach us something. It was pretty hard to come to the realization that we would not be helping a family out this year like we had wanted because we had to help ourselves first. Eeek, that was tough. But we survived and we are that much closer to being able to help other people.

The whole month of December Jared had only made $390 until after Christmas. (He had projects & the money was ‘there’ we just didn’t know where ‘there’ was! One check was supposedly held at the bank for 2 weeks??) In any case, our bills have been paid (& mysteriously without any late fees) & we have food in the pantry. 🙂

I wanted to wait and post about this after December because we actually got 2 anonymous money gifts & I didn’t want to get anymore, lol. We are so blessed with amazing people in our lives & for that I am thankful. We did not have to dip into our emergency fund either, but we were close. Enough of that. I’m excited for a new year & new payments towards our debt.

AS OF DECEMBER 31, 2010:

PAIDOFFKohls(235.26)        $0 (March 2010)
PAIDOFFMy CC($275.70) $0 (April 2010)
PAIDOFFCouch($1472.18) $0 (October 2010)
PAIDOFFCredit Card($4577.81) $0 (October 2010)
Hospital($2000) $1980
PAIDOFFStudent Loan #1($2625) $0 (November 2010)
-Student Loan #2($2625) $2593.28
-Student Loan #3($4000) $2485.37
-Student Loan #4($4500) $4442.57
-Student Loan #5($4523.89) $4502.97
-Student Loan #6($5522.40) $5199.28

TOTAL DEBT: $32,357.24
REMAINING DEBT: $21,203.47

Here is a recap of our Total Debt since
October- $23,427.15
November- $21,715.73
December- $ 21,203.47

I have high hopes for this month too! Here are our goals:
-We have picked 6 envelopes that if we don’t use all of the money by the end of the month, they go towards debt. (Restaurants, clothes, necessities, groceries, entertainment, & blow money)
-Selling more stuff from around our house (closets & garage)
-Pray Pray Pray!!!
-My bonus from work
-I’ve had $100 automatically going to our savings (emergency fund) from my account. We already have our $1K emergency fund so we are stopping this and using that extra money towards debt. That ups our debt snowball automatically to $371.
-Using any extra money we can get our hands on (without breaking the law of course, :P)

Check back soon for January’s update. It will be awesome! 🙂