Am I On Track to Meet My Goal Date?

Although I have been seeing my credit card debt go down, I haven’t really been adding up the numbers to make sure I am still on track to meet my goal date of May 2009. In my mind, I was just figuring that I was meeting the goal of paying $1050/month towards credit cards but I haven’t really been checking it. That’s bad of me, I know. But whenever there is a problem, you need to find a solution.

My solution is to keep track of another set of numbers monthly. It is the total amount that I have paid to the credit cards (and Prosper loan) during a single month.

Here’s how July panned out:

Credit Card #1: $228
Credit Card #2: $1.38
Credit Card #4: $400, $400, $200, $10 = $1010
Credit Card #7: $150
Prosper Loan: $112

Total paid: $1501
Difference from Target Amount: +$451

Whew – that looks great. But June wasn’t so good:

Credit Card #1: $231
Credit Card #2: $476

Total paid: $707
Difference from Target Amount: -$343

June was actually a weird month because I shifted our debt all around and actually didn’t have statements for three of my current debts because they were new. I could have started paying on them, but didn’t. If I had added up my payments in June I would have realized that I was under my target payment amount and I should have paid some more.

Lesson learned: When you set a goal, check up on your progress periodically to make sure you are still on track to meet it. Just because things seem like they are going well doesn’t mean that they are.

* see that $10 payment to Credit Card #4? That’s the payment that put me under the $30,000 mark