{"id":439,"date":"2010-04-16T21:30:07","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T02:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/74.53.225.194\/~story1\/iym\/weblog\/?p=439"},"modified":"2010-10-12T15:30:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T20:30:44","slug":"our-debt-paydown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2010\/04\/our-debt-paydown\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Debt Paydown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like so many people, my family has lived with debt (of one sort or another) our entire lives.<\/p>\n<p>On a website and blog that&#8217;s focused on dispatching debt, padding savings, and improving net worth, I feel it&#8217;s important that I keep readers abreast of my own money situation. Moreover, when it comes to achieving debt freedom, in my case, I&#8217;ve accomplished <b>much<\/b> more since I&#8217;ve made myself somewhat &#8220;accountable to the world&#8221; in this fashion.  I began IYM in early 2002 with just this intent, and it worked beautifully.<\/p>\n<h3>A Brief History<\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been up to my neck in debt, and I&#8217;ve been debt-free except for the mortgage.<\/p>\n<p>Debt-free is better.<\/p>\n<p>As I relate in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/aboutus.shtml\">IYM: About Us<\/a> page, we first became &#8220;debt-free, except for the mortgage&#8221; in 2005. That all changed in December of that same year &#8212; see (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2005\/12\/how-quickly-it-all-changes.html\">&#8220;How Quickly It All Changes&#8221;<\/a> for more info.  Automobile debt (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2005\/12\/theres-something-new-in-garage.html\">&#8220;There&#8217;s Something New in the Garage&#8221;<\/a>) crept back into our financial picture.<\/p>\n<p>So what debts do we have now, and why?<\/p>\n<h3>A Mortgage<\/h3>\n<p>At an effective interest rate of 2.75% (thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2007\/01\/whats-mcc-mortgage-credit-certificate.html\">MCC tax credits<\/a>) for 15 years, I&#8217;m in no great hurry to pay this off. It&#8217;s not included in our Debt Paydown.<\/p>\n<h3>&#8230; And Nothing Else!<\/h3>\n<p>On the right column, the amount shown in my Debt Paydown reflected my balance on our last auto loan. When we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2005\/12\/theres-something-new-in-garage.html\">bought our 2006 Accord<\/a> in December of 2005, we put $4,000 down and financed the balance for 5 years at 3.95 percent. We paid this loan off in early September of 2008, after a mere <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2008\/09\/990-days.html\">990 days<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>What About Student Loans?<\/h3>\n<p>I paid off the last of my student loans (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2005\/05\/so-long-sallie-mae.html\">&#8220;So Long, Sallie Mae&#8221;<\/a>) in May of 2005.  I&#8217;d taken out the first of these loans way back in 1990.  (Oh, all the interest I paid!)<\/p>\n<h3>What About Credit Cards?<\/h3>\n<p>We became free of credit-card debt in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2004\/12\/credit-card-debt-zero.html\">December, 2004<\/a>. And yes, it felt really good.  As I recall, the highest balance we ever accumulated was in the $10,000 range.  (Seeing those red five-digit numbers in Quicken wasn&#8217;t fun, either.)<\/p>\n<p>These days, a glance at our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/networth.shtml\">household balance sheet<\/a> will almost always show that we have credit-card balances outstanding. Don&#8217;t let your head explode, though.  <\/p>\n<p>Instead, rest assured that if there&#8217;s credit-card debt on our balance sheet, it consists of portions which are either (1) non-revolving, and paid off every month; or (2) for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/articles\/2005-02-06.html\">0% credit-card arbitrage<\/a>. I hold these balances in either my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/reviews\/bankreview002_ing_direct.php\">ING Direct (review)<\/a> savings accounts or in short-term Treasuries.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the lowdown on our Debt Paydown!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like so many people, my family has lived with debt (of one sort or another) our entire lives. On a website and blog that&#8217;s focused on dispatching debt, padding savings, and improving net worth, I feel it&#8217;s important that I keep readers abreast of my own money situation. Moreover, when it comes to achieving debt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debt"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Our Debt Paydown<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A brief run-down of our progress in becoming debt free.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mdmproofing.com\/iym\/weblog\/2010\/04\/our-debt-paydown\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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