Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Goodbye Prosper


Today is a good day. I paid off the Prosper loan today. We had it for 15 months, paying it off 21 months early. It took a lot of extra work, but this is a huge mile marker on the road to get out of debt.

Without this loan, we now free up an extra $150 a month to put towards the American Express credit card, which is currently holding a balance of around $4400. That, plus putting anything extra that we can towards it, should mean that we can really start to snowball out of this situation.

I'm incredibly relieved, though I confess it was a bit anticlimactic!

I've been working hard on projects like getting Voiceover work and finding other ways to make extra money. I have a roommate now, and wouldn't have been able to pay off this loan without his financial contribution. Needless to say, the hard work is starting to pay off!

How's your debt journey going?


Starting Debt: 07/02/11 - $21543

Prosper - $0
AmEx - $4494
BoA - $11913
ING - $1133

Total - $17538 (18.5%)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

I Know, I Know

I know it's been a while. I'm sorry. There has been so much and I'm so focused on my food blog that I've totally neglected this one. I'd say No more!! I shall regularly update and prevail! but I really don't want to make a promise that I can't keep.

So, instead, an update.

I've been getting lots of extra work lately doing voiceovers. I just recently landed a contract to record an Audio Book which will help hugely. I have no AC in my car and I simply can't handle it anymore (it's already over 100 degrees in the Valley) and this will give me the last of the money that I need to finally get that handled, plus some extra to pay down my day.

Hey shameless plug! If you need voicework, no matter how big or how small, check out my website here.

So, my Stunt Guy is back in Atlanta, trying to get some work. It's done a little to alleviate the financial strain, but we have a really long way to go. Hopefully he'll get some bigger gigs soon and we can start taking big chunks off our debt. In the meantime, I've got a roommate and gone into hunker down survival mode. This has involved lots of pantry purging and not doing things that cost money. I've also done really well at getting myself in shape, even running a 5K. I'm getting close to my goal weight, and continue to plug away at it.

So, here is the real update. When last I posted, here was the state of the union:


Prosper - $3026
AmEx - $4282
BoA - $11708
ING - $968

Total - $19,984

Now, this is where we stand:

Prosper - $367
AmEx - $4494
BoA - $11913
ING - $1133

Total - $17907

So we've paid over $2000 in the last few months. We've been paying it on our highest interest loan. It's almost paid off and I am so very happy! This loan has been a pain and being done with it will be huge. We'll be able to start snowballing our minimum payments and hopefully the rest will flow nicely. I calculated that if we snowball minimums, we're looking at 32 months worth of debt. I find that to be unacceptable, and am pushing really hard for us to try and get all this paid off in half that time or more.

I'm happy that once we move on to paying off the AmEx, I can throw random dribs and drabs of cash at it whenever I want. With the Prosper loan, we always had to pay at least $150 at a time. I find it better to be able to whittle in down.

I still can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, though I'm sure it's there. But I'm going to keep trucking.