Sayonara Sallie!

 Confession: our apartment is pretty darn messy today. It's also the day that our complex comes through to spray for bugs and make sure the smoke detector is where it's supposed to be. My parents came in over the weekend and we haven't really gotten around to cleaning up and putting laundry away. I feel like I need to apologize to the people who come in and inspect the apartments. How neurotic is that? I seriously thought about making a sign to post on the door "Sorry it's so messy! We had company for Easter."  They probably already think I'm a little nutty because I baked them blueberry muffins last year when our apartment flooded. They were so prompt at getting it all cleaned up and making sure everything was dry, everyone loves blueberry muffins right?

 So anyway we did something pretty exciting yesterday. On the Dave Ramsey plan you order your debts from smallest to largest and work your way up. The thinking behind this is that by paying off something you get a little boost of energy and think "I can do this!" If you start with the bigger balances first it's difficult to see progress and it's easy to just say it's not working and stop trying so hard. It's all psychological but I can tell you it makes a difference! I know this first hand because we picked a larger loan to pay off this time. Wanna know why? Even if you don't want to know, you're here, and reading this so I'm going to tell you anyway!

 The last loan I took out for college was from SallieMae, here are the stats:

• Lender: SallieMae
• Original Balance in 2009: $13,231.00
• Interest Rate: 12.75%
• Minimum Payment: $310.00/month 

 Pretty ugly right? My mom and dad paid the interest payments while I was in school (because they are awesome like that). After I graduated and took over the full payment of principal and interest I just paid that minimum payment. When we looked at it more closely we saw that over $100/month was going to interest alone, gross! 

 After Christmas we decided we wanted to wipe this one out as fast as possible. I have mentioned before that I have a pretty tight 'security gland' and even though we have a savings account I like to see a pretty decent amount in our checking account too. We talked about it and I agreed to loosen up in order to get this out of the way. We had been saving a lot during November and December because we were travelling home for Christmas. So when we got back we started going after this pretty hardcore.

 Between January and yesterday we paid $9,706.56 and now we have $300/month to put towards our next loan! 

 I think a celebration is in order!

Have a great Tuesday!!