Another one bites the dust.....well two

Picture taken by Renae Forehand

We have paid off the van and the bike!!!!  We paid the van off a year early.  Paying off both will add $400 to our debt snowball which will allow us to get the remaining debt paid off faster.  We paid them off using the money we received from our tax return.  We did some calculating and found that paying off these two would yield the best return on investment.  It would give us the largest amount towards our debt snowball than any other two debts we have.

This is a very awesome event for us but we knew that as soon as we paid the van off something was going to happen.  We paid the van off last Tuesday and guess where it was yesterday.

Luckily we have an emergency fund and we were able to pay the $417 cash and not go further into debt.  Even though we had to fork out $400 it still felt good to pay for something in cash.

We've had a bunch of small wins like paying off three small credit cards two weeks ago.  This is the first big win in our snowball and it feels great!!!

-  Live like no one else so that later one you can live and give like no one else.

Stupid with zeros

Have you ever done something stupid financially and regret doing it years later.  Over the last couple of days I think I have figured out my worst financial decision ever.  It happened about two years ago.

I had new car fever.  I was tired of driving my 2009 Honda Civic to and from Mobile due to how loud the cabin was on the interstate.  I somehow talked Callean into letting me be stupid.

I traded in the Civic in on a 2009 BMW 328i.  I was so happy at the time.  But what I didn't realize is that I probably made the worst financial decision of my life.  I traded in a car that was almost paid off for a $24k car.

I really enjoyed driving the BMW.  It's not called the Ultimate Driving Machine for nothing.  But it was very expensive to own.  We started getting really serious about the total money makeover so I started looking at what debt I could payoff or reduce.  So I looked at getting rid of the BMW.

We ended up trading the BMW in on a Jeep Compass because we wanted a second vehicle to transport the 5 of us around.  

The issue with the Compass is that within the last 4 months the value has dropped $4k and I am putting 3k miles on it a month.  

Now two years later I wish I didn't pay my stupid tax kept the Civic.  Guess I'm just stuck with the Compass and a shovel to get myself out of this hole.