Blogging Away Debt Blogging Away Debt follows real people on their journey to debt freedom — with tips on the debt snowball, budgeting, cutting expenses, and staying motivated.

by Emmily Schulze

Getting out of debt in two years? That sounds amazing! When Adam told me about his plan I thought it sounded great. Then, as usual, I thought a little about all that money. For some reason, thinking about the numbers gets me riled up every time. Even when it was just a hundred dollars more than the minimum payment of $1,100, it felt so unreasonably high to me. Every time that monthly debt repayment number increases my blood pressure goes up.

Am I crazy? I know we don’t need the extra income for anything, it’s just the thought of putting $3,400 a month towards debt repayment that makes me feel nutty. It’s just so much money! Gone! Never to get back again!

After I fight with myself about this for a few days and argue about how much money that is, I always end up leaving it up to Adam because I trust his strategic mind and business savvy. He has a plan and he’s good at sticking to plans. On the other hand, I want so many different things. I’d rather diversify, I’d rather have more in our savings, I’d rather chase our dreams now and pay the debt off slowly as we go… But I know the sooner we are out of the debt the better. It’s just sometimes hard for me to wrap my mind around the numbers when they feel so ridiculously big.

On a totally unrelated note, I’m turning 30 in a month. This is another one of those things that feels hard to fathom. I see that I have gray hair and wrinkles and sagginess but I feel as youthful as my 20 year old self. Anything I should do before I turn 30? Anyone do anything crazy for their 30th birthday?

We were Korie & Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty for Halloween. No one really got it, but heck. It was cheap fun.

If you heard about the floods in Austin, here’s some proof. We volunteered for half a day and were shocked.

Adan’s between jobs beard. 🙂 I miss it.

Willie Robertson before the party

by Adam Dawson

I’m always playing with the calculator.  It’s kind of embarrassing, actually.  I’m still waiting on my first paycheck from my new job and I bet I’ve run the numbers a hundred times.

Late last week, monkeying around with the raise and debt numbers revealed something very intriguing.  If we put essentially all of the additional income I’ll be earning toward debt, as well as most of my anticipated annual bonus, we could pay off the entire debt in 2 years flat.  It would require increasing our debt payments to about $3600/month, as well as an extra $7000 annually out of tax returns and bonus checks. It would really exhaust our cash flow, but it would only be for 2 years.  And just think, you’d be rid of our insufferable selves that much faster!

In the past when I’ve experimented with the result of throwing extra money toward debt, it’s only changed the payoff schedule by a couple of months, and the sacrifices needed to accelerate by 2 or 3 months didn’t seem worth it. But accelerating the schedule to only 24 more months really piqued my interest.  It would mean we have to live on the income I was earning before the new job, which should be totally doable, if we keep working on the budget.  It would also mean boosting the emergency fund or any other savings further beyond $5000 would have to wait.  And it would probably slow down our home improvement and other plans.  But it would mean being debt-free at age 33!  And this burden off our shoulders sooner.

I talked it over with Emily and we both agreed we need to think about it a little.  It should be easily doable, but not without its sacrifices.  We will have to be a lot more careful on spending, and I know that holidays and travel will become a bigger stress during the 2 years.  But still, it’s tempting.

Discuss.