It’s the end of 2012, so it’s time for me to share an update of our 2012 Financial Goals. Unfortunately, they stand exactly where they were at the end of September:
1) Pay off our second mortgage by February 20th. DONE!
2) Refinance our mortgage by the end of March. DONE!
3) Continue the Debt Payoff towards our three remaining debts and pay off by the end of December. TWO DOWN, ONE TO GO!
Sigh. We’re still paying down the big student loan. If you remember, it’s my husband’s law school loan (he graduated in 2002, that would be TEN YEARS AGO). We have been paying the minimum all these years–big mistake–but now it will finally be done. I had thought we could pay it off by the end of this year, but I miscalculated a bit. At the rate we’re paying now, it should be done by July 2013, so you’ll see it come up again next week when I share our new goals for next year.
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All in all, it was a very successful year. We worked hard to tackle these debts and continue on our path to be debt-free except for our mortgage. We’re following a modified version of Dave Ramsey’s Seven Baby Steps. I say “modified” because we were not comfortable with only $1,000 for our emergency fund (we did more) and we paid off our debts in order of highest interest instead of loan amount. It still worked! Those Baby Steps are also the direction we’ll be heading with our 2013 Financial Goals…more on that next week.
How did you do on your 2012 financial goals?
Image from .oskar at Flickr
Some people cringe when I tell them I cut back on my retirement savings and focused on paying down a loan with a 3.5% APR instead. The ROI strategy might make others feel great knowing they’re maximizing the return on their dollar. For me, I knew I had to listen to my nervous, overly-anxious, debt-ridden conscious.
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