Jan 2, 2009

Chief Family Officer's New Year's Resolution: Pay off all non-mortgage debt

I've been feeling very sympathetic about PaidTwice's current dilemma: She's super dedicated to paying off her family's non-mortgage debt, but current car troubles are forcing her to seek a balance between paying off debt and having a reliable car.

Like PaidTwice, I am torn. On the one hand, I very much want to wipe out my Stafford loan, which is our only remaining non-mortgage debt. But Marc and I are both facing some uncertainty at work right now, and that uncertainty has me wanting to build up our emergency fund even more - just in case.

So my goal for 2009 remains what I have known it would be since last spring: Paying off the last of our non-mortgage debt by the end of the year.

But I'm going to modify how we're going to accomplish that. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we reduced our retirement contributions in order to free up cash to pay off my student loans. Rather than send in this money monthly, I'm going to park each month's payment in the bank for the time being. It will give us an extra cushion if we should need it. And once we've saved up enough to pay off the loan in one fell swoop, we'll go ahead and do that. We'll end up in the same position, except for paying a little bit of extra interest, but I'll have more peace of mind in the meantime.

My other resolutions are pretty much the same ones I have each year: Love my family. Be kind, gentle, joyous and peaceful. Grow CFO. Lose weight. More on that last one soon.

As an aside, I do plan on reviewing how I did with my 2008 goals . . . when I have a chance!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have paying off my non-mortgage debt this year as my #1 financial goal too. I was surprised by how many people contacted me to say that it was also their goal for the year. Guess we're all worrying about the same thing! Good luck!