Sixty-Two Sixty-Two

The numbers are in. February saw a 10.6% payoff total with the addition of our tax refund. Total paid off to date is 52.2%. I allowed myself to get a little excited at the thought of having it paid off by Christmas (with *maybe WITHOUT* our 2020 tax refund being earmarked towards finishing it off). Positive accounts have been increased by 29.1% over the year along with the debt pay down. Again, this is to garner the company match in both my 401k and HSA accounts. Frugal fitness dropped a bit - I had a nasty respiratory cold for about a week. 30.6 miles on the treadmill, 6.5 miles on the stationary bike. 10 months? Definitely 11 months. Thoughts of smooth sailing......

The average American household has $175,510 in savings!!! Taken at face value, this statement makes the situation sound great, however... The median household currently has $11,700 in savings. So if you lined up every household from largest savings to smallest savings, the household smack dab in the middle has $11,700 in their savings vehicles (retirement accounts, money market accounts, CDs, savings accounts). 29% of households have less than $1000 in these accounts. 22% of households do not have any of these types of savings accounts. The top 1% of households have an average of $2,495,930 in these accounts. The bottom 20% have an average of $8,720. When looking at the averages of households that actually have these accounts, it looks like this: 51% of Americans have a savings account, with an average balance of $32,130. 52% of Americans have one or more retirement accounts, with an average balance of $277,670. 18% have money market deposit accounts, with an average balan

Since starting this debt pay off journey I've spent many hours reading financial news, blogs, success stories, etc. I've been blown away by the reporting and updates on the amount of consumer debt in this country. In a few words - I'm not surprised. My own debt situation was horrible, and even if measured today, I wouldn't consider it anything but poor. As an onlooker offering very simplified explanations of why this is the case, I'd say: Financial education in this country is for the most part non-existent, and "affordable" seems to be measured 30 days at a time. Medical costs are rising significantly and can quickly put an individual/family behind in their finances. We're more of a consumer driven culture than ever before. Flagship smartphone companies are now exploring $1000+ smartphone pricepoints.  FOMO and YOLO are the rally cries of today's youth and young adults. Here are a few stats: Consumer debt in America climbed over 4 tr

Tomorrow marks the one year mark since my first blournal post. For today, I wanted to document a simple snapshot of what the last year has resulted in - What has been accomplished: 52% progress made towards the original debt pay off goal.  Increased retirement  simple living savings by 9%.  Increased health savings account by 41%. What I've learned: I find joy in less. I'm not defined by material possessions. These statement are simple, but hold deep meaning with me. Our culture pushes us towards more everything. It begins when we're little kids and start to build an identity around external "stuff", and unfortunately that only seems to intensify as we get older.  I'm 35, and only beginning to build internal peace absent identification from "stuff". It feels great, and I look forward to growing this liberating and empowering energy going forward.

While I'm not blogging as regularly - nothing has changed regarding repayment efforts! January was a great month on the journey, which incredibly is only 11 days from being 1 year since I made that initial post. With the extra paycheck in January, a good dent was made in the remaining payoff balance. I paid off 7.1% of the remaining balance - bringing my payoff total to 41.6%. Our taxes are filed, providing a return that will be going towards debt as long as no unforeseen events occur. That will bring the total payoff to 47.9%. We'll come real close to a 50% payoff in one year. Which, it will be darn close to having had 50% of my take home pay going to this effort in the past 12 months. Going forward, L's new job has provided us an opportunity to change up how we do our finances, providing more fuel towards this debt bonfire. 12 more months is the goal. Let's do it. Frugal Fitness - 61.68 miles on the treadmill/32.5 miles on the bike