As part of our January Frugal Fresh Start Challenge, I challenged each of you to set a six-month financial goal. Some of you had goals to reduce debt, others had goals of how much you would save or how you would change your spending habits. I really enjoyed reading everyone’s goals (you can read them in the comments here).
The six months is now up. It’s time to report back on how we did and what we learned!
I loved hearing the buzz in our Facebook group about everyone’s progress toward their goals. It’s really encouraging to hear not only what you have accomplished, but what kept you motivated and how you stayed on top of your goals. I asked a few people if I could share their experiences here.
Jacinda said:
My goal was to get our mortgage below $100K. I created a chart to track my process (just a bar graph with a countdown to the goal amount) and updated it twice a month. On the piece of paper with the chart on it I also wrote what the goal was and what steps I intended to take to achieve the goal. The piece of paper is on the wall in my bedroom so it was the first and last thing I saw every day and night to help keep me on track. The best part was reaching our goal (at the end of April) that hubby doubted we’d achieve. It was great sharing our success together.
Linda said:
Our six-month goal was simple: to live on our fixed income without taking any money out of our 401K’s. For the last six months, our expenditures were $2512.87 less than our fixed income, so we achieved our goal and even saved a little. Each day, we noted how we were doing over the previous 30-day period. We were determining if expenditures were still lower than the fixed income for that period. This tactic helped us see immediately if extra expenses meant that we needed to tighten down as much as possible or delay an expense that could be delayed.
Beth said:
Our six month goal was to pay off an almost $7000 loan in time for baby number two’s arrival, and then to snowball that payment into another almost $8000 loan paid off by Christmas. We were able to pay off the first loan in April! We only have about $2900 left on the second loan, which should be paid off in September, considering all goes well with baby. Then to start on the next one! It’s a bit exhausting but I’m so happy to be way ahead of where I thought we would be by this time. Just keeping the snowball rolling!
That’s a small sample of the experiences shared. Even those who didn’t achieve the exact goal still made progress or were better able to handle the setbacks that happened.
PS- If you think some interaction with positive, frugally-minded people would help keep you accountable and motivated, come join our Facebook group Making Frugality and Finance Fun. There’s always encouragement and great ideas floating around there.
Now It’s My Turn
Starting at our January 1 debt balance of $82,459, our goal was to get our remaining student loan debt down to $65,000 in the first six months of the year.
We were really close. If you take a peek at the sidebar, you’ll see that the debt remaining as of July 1st was $67,050. After making that calculation, but also on July 1, we made a beginning-of-the-month debt payment of $1,000, which put us at a balance of $66,050 (plus some interest). We would usually have a larger beginning of the month payment, but we decided to put a big chunk toward getting a new van (more on that to come).
So we didn’t quite make it, but I am happy with what we did accomplish. The goal we set was a stretching goal. At the time we set it, we weren’t quite sure how we were going to reach it (it wasn’t possible with our numbers at the time), but we set it anyway. Even though we didn’t reach the exact goal we had set, we still paid off more than $16,000, which is exciting.
How about you?
- Did you set a six-month goal? How did you do?
- What did you do differently to be able to reach your goal (changes, sacrifices, etc)?
- What was the hardest part? What was the best part?
- How did you keep motivated and positive?
- Do you have a goal for the next six months?
Six months ago, I commented and said that by the end of June, I would like to have our trip to CA fully paid for (it is and we leave in 2.5 days!), increase my husband’s work retirement up to a percentage that will maxx it out by the end of the year (also done!), and keep our emergency fund where it is now and not touch it. Then by the end of December, I’d like to have my husband’s vehicle paid off completely…back in January we owed slight under 19K. The good news is that like I mentioned, our trip is fully paid for and retirement was increased a few months ago. The bad news is that our emergency fund is about 3K smaller. That being said, I’m not gonna beat myself up because our car balance is down to slightly over 5K! That means since January we put 14K towards it! (An extra paycheck plus a hefty tax return helped a ton). So I am proud of what we have accomplished, even though I knowingly put too much toward it some weeks/months which left us having to take money out of savings. But we knew that money was there in savings, otherwise I would not have done it. Bottom line is that even though we could be doing better, we still have 6 more months to go to beef the emergency fund back up and pay off the car. I am positive these two items will be accomplished by then, as well as paying cash for Christmas!
Correction: Didn’t mean to be dishonest…just realized we also just withdrew some cash today from our EF for our trip, so the exact number SHORT our savings account is is: $3,734.83. Quite a big number that I’m not proud of, but again, I am happy for the progress we did make!
Have a wonderful trip Liz! It will be much more enjoyable knowing that it’s already paid for! I’m glad you don’t beat yourself up about not getting everything exactly as planned. You are making great progress!
I just wanted to reiterate what Tracie had said and say how great YNAB is. I started reading your blog about 6 months ago and started writing down everything we spent, so to understand where our money was going. After 6 months I felt it was time to give YNAB a go and I think it is amazing. I am still in the first month of it but the benefits are being reaped already. Our goal is to live off last months income and start saving for a deposit for a house. I can now see where our money goes and I make much more informed financial decisions. Thanks for your inspiration Stephanie. I wouldn’t be where I am now without you and your blog!
Thanks for the kind words Janey! I’m glad you’re loving YNAB. You’ll love it even more when you’re living on last month’s income. How exciting to be saving for a house!!
I didn’t know about your website when this challenge started, so I don’t have anything to share. But I recently joined the Facebook group and love it!
One thing I have been thinking about lately is that it’s not enough just to set a budget or set goals – I need to realistically assess what it will take to get there and what obstacles I face. For example, one big weakness of ours is that in our minds we say, “We’re going to watch our spending,” and then little “necessities” come up that have no specific allocation in the budget, so they just come out of our bank account balance (which, not surprisingly, has been going down). I have been gently pointing this out to my husband and trying to keep myself accountable as well – whenever a new “need” comes up, the first question is, “Where is that money going to come from?” So I guess one of our goals is to ask that question and hold ourselves accountable to answering it before we spend the money. Sometimes it will have to come out of our planned debt repayment line item, but we are working as hard as we can to avoid that.
I totally agree Jenni! Holding yourself accountable is so important. “Watching” your spending and tracking your spending are two different things.
I believe I found your site sometime in late December, when I first started my debt payoff overhaul. I didn’t set any 6 months goals, but I have accomplished so much during this time. The single most contributing factor in getting my unnecessary spending under control and shoveling money towards my debt has been YNAB. YNAB is worth double the price. If at all possible, you should write another blog post about how amazing it truly is! I was living the credit card float and felt helpless when I first started. I had no idea how I could get ahead. On February 1st, when I got paid, I told my money where to go and I couldn’t believe what I saw….I had enough money to cover my CC expenses and I still had some (only a little) money to live off of till my next check on the 16th. So I did it. Month 2 with YNAB and I was living on this month’s income!
Next month, the first of my debts will be paid off then it will be time to get that student loan paid off. I’ve even been able to budget and find money to travel with during this time. I’m young, single, and childless so as much as I want to be debt free, now’s the time to enjoy traveling as much as I can before I find a man who convinces me to settle down 😉
Your blog has been a huge inspiration as well. If I hadn’t found your blog and you hadn’t convinced me to get YNAB, I may still feel helpless and I know my payoff amount thus far would not be as much as it is. Seriously Stephanie, I owe a ton of it to you!! I can’t wait to come to these comments and tell you I’m debt free next year! 🙂
Totally agreed Tracie! YNAB has really allowed us to pay the maximum amount of debt off each month. I’m glad you’re loving it too and making awesome progress!!
I have written about YNAB quite a few times! 🙂 Here are just a few:
Why we Switched from Mint to YNAB
Budgeting Every Penny: How a zero-based budget helps us pay off more debt
Maximizing our Debt Payoff Each Month
Using Credit Cards with YNAB
How our budget handles unexpected expenses
I did not find your site until recently, but I did have goals set. Since I started blogging in January, I’ve paid off about 30k in student loans! I had set a goal of having all of my and my husband’s smaller loans paid off and just have the two biggest ones left and it looks like I’m going to pay off my last small(ish) one by the end of next month and then get to working on the bigger ones! So my new six month goal is to be 50% done with my second largest student loan (right now just over 40k) by the end of the year!
Wow! That is great progress on your student loans this year! Keep it up! 🙂