Thursday, January 3, 2008

2007 In Review

Well, the year has come to a close. What a year it was - tons of financial things happening, with the biggest, of course, being debt payoff. We learned the art of Cheap Dating, hit a couple of big milestones, and improved our attitudes towards finances in general. Of course, there were plenty of bumps in the road. But more importantly, the numbers!

  • We paid a total of $43,712.93 towards all of our debts (except mortgage). This includes credit cards, student loans, and auto loans.
  • Of that $43K, $30,099.73 was paid to principal, meaning we paid $13,613.20 in interest.
  • The amount paid to credit cards was $23,712.57, with $18,769.32 of that paid to the principal, leaving $4943.25 in interest.
Whoa! That a lot of money. Looking at my income for 2007, just about all the money I made went straight towards our debt. It's both incredible that we were able to do that and horrible that we were in the situation where we had to. I am proud and excited by the progress we made towards our main goal in 2007 and I can't wait to finish up the credit cards in 2008!

8 comments:

Sharon said...

Congrats on a fantastic year! I hope to do the same in 2008. - Sharon

wealthy_1 said...

Who's better than you?

Congratulations on the huge debt reduction. All the best to you in 2008!

JvW said...

Thank you both enormously! Your encouragement means the world.

Anonymous said...

That's a massive effort, well done! You should be so proud of each other!

Anonymous said...

That's an outstanding job! Have you seen No Credit Needed? He has a nice network of people aiming to get out of debt.

Anonymous said...

WOW! Paying off over $40,000 in debt! That's awesome!

My hubby and I don't make much more than that together - but I wish we could do that!!

Out of curiosity - how much of your annual salary is that $40,000? We spend about 1/4 of our take home pay on credit cards. Some months more than that...

JvW said...

Lazy Man - I have been meaning to look into that! I have heard some great things about NCN.

Cyber - it's just about 40% of our take home. Tricky math I had to do. :)

Anonymous said...

40% of your take home! That's fabulous!! I guess I had better get more "with the program"!

Congratulations!