Finding my goals again

I have been doing some serious thinking over the past few weeks about my current finances. At this point I am barely making enough money to pay my monthly bills on time. I have been asked: How long do I plan on being this financially tight? Am I going to be able to financially support my little family?

Both of those questions are very serious and great questions to think about. I want to be financially independent and be able to support my little family without relying any help. I also want to continue to pay my bills on time like I have ever since I started getting bills. I have never been late nor plan on ever being.

After reviewing my monthly budget again, probably crossing over to being coming obsessive about it, I keep coming back to 2 bills that are literally killing my budget: after school care & the student loan payment. Both combined add up to $650/month - almost another mortgage payment! Ouch! =o(

I have been doing the Dave Ramsey thing for over a year now and when my finances when upside down at the beginning of September, I felt like I had to start all over because there were assets frozen (for who knows how long......) creating financial problems. I didn't feel as financially secure as before. So I started over.

Baby Step #1: Emergency fund 

Thanks to all the generous support I have received over the past few months, I have saved up my emergency fund that is NOT frozen and readily available.

On to Baby Step #2: Pay off debt

This is where I got stumped. I want to pay off the student loan (my only debt besides the mortgage) so it doesn't continue to be a huge burden on me. It was a goal originally set at the beginning of 2014 before my life changed and became harder. It is a goal I truly want to keep and achieve in 2015. Research and time was given looking into getting the student loan reduced or forgiven but I didn't met the requirements for that. I could defer the payments for a year but the only thing that would do is increase what I owe by interest being added to the balance; in turn, hurting me more than helping me. The only think I came up with is it just needs to get paid off for good. I started paying on it in December 2012 and came to the two year mark where - yeah...... ;o/ ..... my payment was to gradually go up. So it went up to $300/month. Peachy great, huh?

Despite this set back, I started dreaming of how I could pay off $20,600 in 11 short months (Nov '15) so that I could have the student loan paid off in 3 years instead of the projected 10 years. Seemed like an impossible order to accomplish in a unreasonable amount of time right?

Time to use my accounting degree to good use.

As I mentioned before, I have assets that are frozen due to the divorce proceeding that has been taking place.......at turtle speed.....er more like snail speed. IF (I know a lot would be riding on this small 2 letter word.....) the divorce goes in my favor (fingers crossed they do), then I would take any assets I have been awarded and dump them directly on the student loan. This would be a HUGE help because the $20,600 is actually 3 loans totally that amount. If the assets I am hoping and praying are awarded to me and went directly onto the student loan, then it would pay off 2 of the 3 loans, cutting my monthly payment over half!!

But the frozen assets I am hoping for don't pay off the student loan entirely. It is a tremendous help, but I still need a plan for the rest of it. Don't worry, I keep crunching numbers.

If I continued on making the same $300 monthly payments that would continue to pay the loan down with most of it going to principle. This too though, still leaves a balance left which I have a few ideas of how I could cover it.

A) Tax refund money which use to go towards the property payment which I now don't have, yet I have no clue what I would be getting back with the changes that have happened in the past few months.

B) Any proceeding from a HUGE garage sale is planned in May, downsizing all my stuff.

C) Promote the crap out of my photography business.

D) Something else that I haven't figured out yet. ;o)


Worse case scenario, the divorce proceeding don't go as well as I hoped (won't surprise me with my luck the past 4 months...) and I don't get the assets I hoped for; thus, I don't have the student loan paid off by Nov 2015. That doesn't mean I'm not going to give it my all, penny-pinch every chance I get, put every last penny onto that stupid loan to get as close as I can to paying it off by my planned deadline.

I have my goal and I have a written plan on how I would like to get there. Yes, there will be bumps in the road along the way that I will have to figure out when the time comes, but I have my map to keep me on my course to finish Baby Step #2 of paying off my debt. Then I can move on to Baby Step #3! That will be a great feeling when I get there! =oD

Until then, it's time for me to stay focused on getting financially secure again so my little family can be protected and able to stand on our own feet.