09.06.19 Debt = $26,539.01

Oh man. I made a giant leap down with the money I got from my part in refinancing the house. I paid close to $5,000 down and here I am, almost half the debt I was sitting with back in December of 2016. I put about $300 in addition to an extra $350 I made from dogsitting in savings. I'm hoping whatever I spend on my "free" trip to Spain I can pull out of my savings and NOT touch credit for it.

I also did a FREE balance transfer from my Barclay card (apr 11.25% ish) to a 15 month 0% Bank of America card. I've paid Bank of America SOOOO much interest since 2003 that I definitely felt like this was deserved, but still a nice surprise. I still hate them though.

08.15.19 Debt = $31,530.78

Today I paid $3,700 down between my Venture card that I share with my partner and my highest interest Chase card. By this time tomorrow, that should be reflected in my accounts and I'll be in less that $30K of debt. This lump sum came from refinancing our house and taking some of the extra money to pay down debt. She threw $3K at her student loans as soon as it was available.

Now then, we still need to renovate some parts of our house and put aside about double our quote, because we know how these things can go. Hopefully we won't need all of that for the actually renovations and can buy some grown-up furniture for the room that will have new, non-crumbling walls.

I hope these payments will post tomorrow and I can post a new debt number less than thirty thousand dollars! 

07.30.19 Debt = $32,085.46

So tomorrow, tomorrow... my partner & I go pick up a check for $53,000. She refinanced our house and I co-signed. Our mortgage of $180,000 starts over, but we opted for the cash-out refinance because the mortgage rate is way better than our student loan or credit cards rates. So my debt is actually more like $212,000 or at least $122,000 - but I'm going to ignore that for now. The biggest chunk of this "cashback" will be for some renovations the house needs (walls are crumbling) and another big chunk will go to pay down my ladyfriend's student loans. She isn't in the same credit card debt mess that I am, but she owes over $150,000 for three degrees. The highest amount going to her graduate degree for social work - as if social workers will ever be able to pay that off. The higher education system in the United States makes me so, so sad. I wish gap years were mandatory. I wish I could have figured out some life stuff before being thrown into college.

Anyway, there should be a little left over for me to pay down some of this debt. I am hoping to have it under $30K by September 1st. I should be able to do that with or without this extra cash. I want to zap my Chase Freedom ($2,952.43 @ 22.99% apr) so I can then move on to my next smallest debt, my student loan which is just under $2K now. I guess I'm snowballing. Here we go. 

07.18.19 Debt = $32,219.34

You know what is expensive? Hurricanes. The treat of the just-barely-category-1-Barry to New Orleans sent me, my partner, our dog and cat evacuating out of the storm's path to Mobile, Alabama. I am grateful that all was fine in the city, and we actually had a nice time in Mobile (plus a good practice run should this happen again). It was however at least $300 for gas, a pet-friendly hotel, food, and sandbags that I wasn't planning on spending. I put it all these unexpected expenses on the 0% Capital One Venture card, but I need to not let that card get out of hand.

Barry isn't all to blame though for this $782 hike over last post. Most importantly - or least of my worries - was buying two tickets from NYC to Barcelona & back, as well as two tickets round trip to NYC, bookending the trip to Spain. (The Yoga trip I won - see last post) I got two roundtrip flights via Scott's Cheap Flights platform + Capital One Venture rewards for $810.79! That's MSY>LGD>YUL>BCN & MAD>BRU>JFK (one day in NYC) LGD>MSY. That's about what I paid to fly to Paris in 1999. I kinda feel like all the cheap flights are going to disappear - or get regulated, so we should take advantage of them now.

Now, to use the next five weeks of summer to start saving! I have a few dog-sits lined up and I should plan to Door Dash more, find the free things to do and brush up on mi español.

06.19.19 Debt = $31,437.26

So I haven't made that much progress in the past six weeks, but some interesting things have happened.

Mainly, #1 - I won a yoga retreat to Barcelona in October. My partner won a luxury safari that we took back in 2017. It was amazing and unreal. It some ways it is still sinking in. After we got back I started aggressively entering contest after contest going anywhere from Paris to Baton Rouge. I had a "I'll get you back" mentality. In two years I've entered over 1,100 contests and I actually won one. Now five days doing yoga in Barcelona still isn't quite a ten-day luxury safari, but it's a pretty good start - especially not that long after our other trip. So I verified that it was real and decided on an October date. This will give me longer to look forward to the trip and longer to save, and maybe we'll beat the tourist rush that Barcelona experiences in the summer.

Five days of yoga, accommodation, and one vegetarian meal per day are covered, the flights are not. Also, you don't fly all the way to Europe for just five days, right? I found two pretty good flights out of New York (it's cheaper to fly from New Orleans to New York and then to Spain) for $338.50. So I put those on my new venture credit card and *hoping* that that might give me enough points to book the MSY-NYC flights. That would be great. Now we just need to save for a few extra nights in Madrid and all the things we will do outside of the yoga class.

#2 - I went on a trip to Upstate New York for my partner's college reunion. She bought the flights and paid for the reunion, but the petsitters, Uber trips to and from JFK, a sale at Topman because they are closing their US stores, plus food and drinks really added up. I've been laying low since we've been back to make up for it.

#3 - There's a lot of other travel and family trips coming up that is going to have me just treading water this summer. Hopefully I can do some more Uber Eats deliveries and some petsitting with Rover.

*Debt does not include these recent flight purchases, they haven't posted yet.

05.07.19 Debt = $32,699.44

Two bits of good news this week: I qualified for a migraine study which I already received a $50 compensation (a two hour visit with blood drawl), and I receive another $100 for two more visits, as well as an additional $250 if I complete the e-diary after I take the provided medicine. Not bad to be getting  paid for my years of suffering.

Also, I picked up a dog sitting gig this weekend, which was pretty easy and got $60 for five visits. The dogs are great, the only downside is the house is about a 20 minute drive from my house. But this and the $50 from the migraine study is an unexpected $110 I can dump towards this debt.

I'm trying a little experiment with my student loan payment. Navient does this *really* cute thing where if I set up a payment for Friday, the funds don't withdraw until TUESDAY. So they get an extra FIVE days of interest, even though the money is available and they have been withdrawing from the same account for years. ALSO, the higher interest loan of course takes an extra day. SO. With my paycheck coming on Friday, I scheduled the higher interest loan to post on Thursday (fingers crossed it won't actually bounce) and the lower interest ones to post on Friday. We'll see if either of these actually goes through this week.

05.01.19 Debt = $32,529.35

Oh man. I was waiting to post this because there for a few weeks my debt went up instead of down. My dog had a little over $1100 worth of work done at the vet (including having his teeth cleaned $599). So I put that all on my new Capital One card with 0% interest & spending over $1,000 got me 20,000 miles. I *really* hope I won't regret that in a few years and I'll be laughing all the way to Miami or somewhere...

But the exciting thing is my big Prosper loan is down to just over $4K now and I think I only have 7 payments left. I keep thinking, it will be so much easier after I get this paid off. I will be able to save a little more, and make some real headway on my other loans. At the rate I'm paying my student loans, I should have just 2 years left. That would make me student debt free by 42. Maybe I can really crack down & have those paid off *before* I turn 42.. 03/21/2020 That would be nice.