I don't think my previous mini goals were aggressive enough since I handily beat them ahead of schedule. So this time I'm giving myself a real challenge: pay both the American Express (balance: $5,908) and Citibank Professional Card (balance: $3,333) by March 31st. Usually paying $9,000 in debt in 6 weeks would be impossible for me, but as long as I receive my tax refund on time, this is doable.
It feels so good to tackle this debt, especially since I am about to lose/quit my job and want to shore up my balance sheet FAST. I'm really focusing on restricting my spending and increasing my side income. For example, I've been aggressively going after mystery shopping assignments - I can't remember the last time I had a whole day for myself without doing some kind of work! I also reduced some of my recurring fees (Internet and mobile service) and am being extra careful about spending money on food and gas, my two largest variable expenses.
Thanks for adding the me to the blog roll, I am still amazed at how you can pay off eveything! Personally we only netted $46,000 on our income tax, and we're still finding it hard to pay off our past credit card debt.
ReplyDeleteMarilyn,
ReplyDeleteThe kicker is my rental properties. For over 6 years I made a nice income (up to low 6 figures one year) and I spent just about every free dollar I had on buying houses. I lived like I was making $20,000/year (well, except for when I bumped my head and bought the BMW), so I had a lot of free cash to do this.
I'm a HUGE fan of recurring income, especially the passive kind where you don't have to work too hard for it. Once I renovate the property, most of my rentals work like an annuity with positive cash flow month after month with minimal effort.
I have one rental also that my daughters live in, we bought the house 27 years ago, when I was er 10 (hee hee) , the housing and the neighborhood has declined along with the housing market so selling it right now would be a big loss, also I was able to take a big loss on it for my taxes, hence the 46,0000. Even though I have one 15yr old at home I do stretch every dollar. My new avenues are exploring passive online income, and regrettable I haven't checked in to the mystery shopping. I have plenty of time I work 3 12 hour shifts per week as an RN any great ideas? I'd like to do more online passive income too, changing from blogger to dot com. I've already bought my domain name wwww.marilynsmoney.com , would like to start a network of blogs that support each other and refer to each other. I dunno, just thinking.
ReplyDelete