January 2011 Monthly Review

It’s the first month of the new year.  Have you given up on your goals/resolutions?  I haven’t and I’ve been working hard at them since the first day of the month.  Along with my normal debt review at the end of the month, I’m going to begin to include updates on my health/gym goals.

Student Loans:

I haven’t made as much progress as I’d like on these since I paid off my nelnet loan at the beginning of November.  I paid a big payment in late November to my direct loan, but haven’t paid anything since.   I need to step it up.

Direct Loan $3,909 ($360) – This has been my prime target since November, and I’ve been doing an OK job.  December was an expensive month, and most of what I would have put towards this went to various things.  On the other hand, I’m beyond excited that this is under 4k!  My goal was to have this paid off by the end of the first quarter, and that’s looking pretty probably at this point.  Hopefully I’ll get some assistance from various places.  I haven’t made my snowball payment on this yet this month, but it’s looking to be $700 or so.

Great Lakes Loan $12,248 ($117)  Just sent my regular minimum payment to this loan.  This loan will be the last one marked for payoff.

Truck Debt:

This is for my vehicle.  I had already started trying to become debt free when I bought this, so I was quite torn as to wether or not to take on new debt while I was trying to eliminate other debt.  If you want to read more about it, check here, here and here.

Ford Credit: $ 17,695 ($264): Just made the regular monthly payment on this loan, not going down as fast as I’d like.  On the up side, I’ve paid it down 4k from its original balance over the past 12 months.

Health Goals Progress

I’ve been keeping track of my progress this month, and I can say that it has been a total mixed bag up until this point.  I started out ok, then took a small vacation where I didn’t get a chance to go at all, then got a little sick.  Enough with the excuses, next month is time to bat 100%.  I’m trying to go 4 times each week.

Total Visits

Week 1 (Jan 2-8): 4
Week 2 (Jan 9-15): 3 (was on vacation for this weekend – no excuse, though)
Week 3 (Jan 16-22): 3
Week 4 (Jan 23-29): 3
(Rest of days will count in Feb)

Goal Visits: 16
Total Visits: 13

Total Debt Level: $33,854 ($739)  Obviously not as much progress as I would have liked, but it’s moving in the right direction.  All I need to do now is keep working hard and keep focusing, and I’ll be towards my goal in no time!