February Progress! "It's not you, it's me"

Loan Update:

Hooray for Tax Season!  Like I said earlier we got $3265 of our money back from our loan to the government.  Combining that with our refund from the refinance ($789) and the house payment we're skipping because of the refiance ($765), and our normal monthly contribution of about $2500 we had about $7319.

SO!  We paid off the ECSI loan which was $5140.82.  Yay!

We also paid the AMEX ($863) which had the Cruise Deposit, the Home Inspection, and Kristi's flight to LA.  We use the AMEX for these purchases for the protection the credit card offers, and we never carry a balance since we pay it off at the end of the month.

Additionally, we had about $370 left over in January that we carried over into February to pay loans with.  Also, Kristi found out that she will be teaching summer school this year, so she'll have another paycheck in July that we will use to cover expenses in August and September (the two months she doesn't get paid for the year).  This means the money we've been saving for those months we can use to pay off a loan this month.  So, with some luck and thrifty spending we'll be able to pay off the Gate 3 Loan.  I'll post when/if we do it this month or decide to play it safe and do it in March.

"It's not you, it's me!"

This week we went to Bank of America and to Umpqua and closed a bunch of accounts and consolidated others.  We opened an Umpqua account because it gave us a discount on the closing costs and we thought it would be easier to pay the mortgage with an Umpqua account.  While we were thrilled with the service we received, Umpqua is severely lacking in their online services and it's a pain in the ass to use your phone to access your account (only 1 phone can be linked to an account).  For the way we do our banking it simply wasn't going to work for us.  We cancelled our Umpqua accounts and got rid of a bunch of extraneous BoA accounts.  We know only have 1 joint checking account and 2 savings accounts. 

However, the real story came when we cancelled our Visas with BoA.  We never used them (only use the AMEX), so we decided to finally cancel them.  The banker called the Visa people to cancel my card.  She chatted with the rep and closed my account, no questions asked, except "Why?" and our answer. "we don't use credit cards anymore."  No problem there.

Then!  Then she had to call back to cancel Kristi's.  She got a different rep this time, a real go getter who didn't want to have to cancel the account.  Eventually the banker passed the phone to Kristi who dodged some questions, and finally after a few minutes, Kristi said, "It's not you, it's me."  The banker and I laughed so loudly that Kristi had to cover the receiver.  We laughed about it for a good few minutes afterward and then left.  Just remember, when you want to cancel your credit card, you have to use the classic breakup line, "It's not you, it's me!"

February is Rocking!

I just wanted to write a quick post about how awesome February is shaping up to be for the debt snowball.

We sent in our taxes last week and expect our refund to arrive next week.  Our refund was about $3300, which will go directly to loans.

In addition to that, we refinanced our home from a 30 year fixed @ 5.0% to a 15 year fixed at 3.25%.  Currently our house payment, included private mortgage insurance (PMI), taxes, and home-owner's insurance totals roughly $765.  It's going to go up to $925 (and we're eliminating PMI), but our loan term has been cut in half.  I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but the amount we're saving in interest is ginormous.  However, the other benefit of refinancing our home loan is that we get to skip a full 2 months of house payments, so all the saved money goes to loans.

But wait, there's more.  Not only are we getting a great interest rate on our house, but because our loan-to-value (how much you owe compared to how much your house is worth on the market) is low we're actually getting money back from the refinance this month to further put towards loans.

So, all in all we'll have about $6000-$6500 to put towards loans this month.  We've decided to pay off my ECSI loan which rests at about $5200 and then put the rest towards the lowest Gate loan remaining.  The main reasons for skipping to this loan is 1) It has the third highest monthly payment ($80) and the second highest interest (5%) of all our remaining loans.  2) It doesn't sync with Mint.com, so it's a logistical pain.  And 3) I'm sick and tired of having to use their website that was set up in what feels like the 90s.

And also, since there's no house payment due next month either we'll have enough money to knock out the smallest remaining Gate loan AND pay the balance due for the cruise.    

I'm very excited about how this is shaping up.  Sometimes I'm too excited.  I look at the calendar and want it to move faster, I want to be done with our loans.  But I know we're headed in the right direction, and I know that we're ahead of our projections, so I will try and slow down and enjoy the experience of destroying our debt.