His Hers Money

After reading about the Debt Snowflaking process over on I’ve Paid for This Twice Already I decided to give it a try. If you look on my ABOUT page you will see a simple break down of my current debts. I basically have some student load debt and my car loan. My car loan is manageable with a payment of $455 and a balance of about $8100 currently. My student loans, while manageable, are really just getting on my nerves!

I really had every intention of getting them paid off within ten years of graduating. That ten years is pretty much up now, and they’re not paid off. One of them is my portion of my grad school. My company paid the difference ( I still have to finish my thesis and pay $3300 upon it’s submittal, but I have that money in savings) which really helped out.

I still have about $5500 left in undergraduate loan debt. I basically want this debt gone NOW! Even though my graduate school loan has the highest interest at 11% and I’ve paid it down from $9000 to $5700 it just wasn’t giving me the emotional satisfaction I really need in my debt repayment process.

I’ve really never made any huge effort to pay extra on my student loans before now so I have a little catching up to do. I attacked the two smallest ones which we both just under $1000 each. In the past few months I’ve been making extra payments on both of them and now I only owe $310 on one of them and $385 on the other. I see no reason why both of these can’t be paid off next month since my regular payment would be around $100 each anyways. I know it will be a great feeling to just finish both of them up.

So, what is my personal recommendation? Pay your lowest debt off first to get the feeling of accomplishment and then re-evaluate from there. I think I will work on my highest interest one once these two small ones are done to reduce my interest.

I (HERS) unfortunately have to find a new financial advisor. I have been with the same guy since 2002 and I have really enjoyed working with him. Unfortunately he has received a promotion up to a leadership position within his company and won’t be directly working with clients any more. Great for him, not so great for me.

The whole thing really came as a shock to me and I really wasn’t prepared to make such a change. I am not looking to change firms at this point but I do need to find a new advisor within the company. I got an email and voicemail from the assigned replacement saying hello and introducing himself but I really wasn’t getting a great feeling from him. FIrst of all it sounded like it was just a given that I wanted him to manage my retirement without any questions asked. The last thing I want in a financial advisor is to feel like I’m talking to a used car salesman!

So, I emailed him back and said I would be more than happy to interview him and consider him as a candidate but I would also be interviewing others as well. I said he could come to my office to speak with me if he was interested. It’s amazing how his attitude changed! So, he will be coming to my office to speak with me on Thursday morning.

I’ll let everyone know how it goes!

I am a little behind that I don’t have a good automated way to track my money. I literally work with an old fashioned check book register and so far it’s worked pretty well for me. Every time I get paid I write it in and subtract all of the bills that have to be paid from that check and then I know exactly how much I have left over. I have all of my savings and investments taken out automatically so whatever is left over, no matter how much or how little that check, that’s what I have for spending money and money to pay extra on my bills.

This month was pretty average in term of extra money so I made paid a little bit extra on my debt.

Student Loan 1: Due $78 Paid $278

Student Loan 2: Due $139 Paid $138

Student Loan 3: Due $118 Paid $118

Student Loan 4: Due $99 Paid $100

Car Loan: Due $455 Paid $455

So, it wasn’t too much extra paid but hey, $200 extra is $200 extra! My goal for next month is to double that and pay $400 extra. We’ll see how I do!

Well, if you read the post below that His wrote earlier today you will see his comments regarding the Bose Home Theater speakers that he is currently “jonesing” for. Well, let me let you in on a little secret: Prior to the current transformation that His is experiencing, those said speakers somehow found their way to our house! Now, I’m not talking about a brochure or picture of them, but the actual speakers. Delivered in a big box, direct from Bose themselves.

Paid for of course by, oh wait, they weren’t paid for, they were financed.

I utilized the Return to Sender option and told Mr UPS to take them right back where they came from and when His got home from work I informed him of his decision to return the speakers and hold off on that purchase. For some reason he didn’t remember making that decision but I think he realized that this wasn’t one of those battles worth fighting.

So, why am I telling you this? So you can see just how far he has come in only two months. It was just late January when those speakers temporarily escaped from the Bose factory only to be returned safe and sound. Now he is using some of his allowance funds to save for them. I am so proud of him!