So I've been hard at work trying to reduce my expenses and paydown as much debt as possible this past year. I took my annual bonus and paid off two cars, sold one and bought a ten year old Honda. Refinanced my main home twice, and my rental once. We've been working to get our budget down, but my wife has yet to jump on the train. It could be something to do with being overwhelmed with caring for our 4 year old son and our now twin ten-month olds a year after an insanely difficult pregnancy right after moving her an hour away from our support group. (oops) 2013 is the knuckle-down year where I hope to get our expenses (counting principal payments on mortgages/loan as savings) to under 75% of our income.
Here's the monthly costs I've been able to reduce over the past 11 months:
Paid off Minivan 287.02
Sold Sedan 294.78
Medical Bill Payback 100
Furniture CC 41
Primary Home Refi1 82.71
Rental Refi 197
Primary Home Refi1 234.94
Insurance Change 40.03
Total Savings/mo $1,277.48
The amount of "savings" (debt paydown) was $35,618 on $97,340.49 (after-tax, doesn't include retirement savings which were mostly on hold for this year) giving a savings rate of 36.5%. This is not currently sustainable as a good 10-15k of this came from liquidation of crap and my car. I've run out of stuff to sell! Hoping to find $25k in 2013.
Just felt good to put that out there, that's about it. Maybe I'll get brave and open my budget kimono later.
