Welcome to Debt Free in 5 Years! (0/60)

Hey everybody! My name is Jayme, I'm a young millennial, and in the six years since I graduated college, I've managed to rack myself up quite a bit of debt. At my worst, I owed over $110k, but as of April 1, 2021, I was $89,381 in debt. My goal is to bring that number to $0 by April 1, 2026.

As I take this journey to free myself from the multiple debts I owe, I'm going to share the tips I use to save money, and the apps and websites I use to help bring in some additional income (both cash and crypto) in addition to my steady income from my two jobs!

Every month, I'll share my monthly income and where all of my money went- I am not going to hide anything. I live a pretty normal life for a woman in her late 20s and I want to help others see that you don't have to make enormous sacrifice and live off ramen to pay off debt (although eating ramen a couple times a week does help!).

Also, every week or so, I'll share apps and websites I use to bring in passive income- crypto websites, investment apps, and cash-back on shopping. All of these are sites that I use and recommend to my friends. While there are referral codes that may benefit both me and you for some of these sites, I'm going to always give honest reviews. Further down the line, as I keep checking out new sites, I'll also cover sites I used that didn't do anything for me. If it's not worth your time, if you have to put in a lot of money to see any returns at all, if it's a sketchy site, I will warn you so you don't have to make the same mistakes I did!

But here we are, at month 0/60. As of the start of the month, I owed $89,381 to six different lenders, and my income should be about $3600 for the month of April. Below is a screenshot from the file I use to plan my goal, and as you can see, in order to be on track for paying everything off in the next 60 months, I need to pay off a total of $1490 this month!

To make this goal, I'll have to make all of the minimum payments on my debts and pay a good amount extra! Below is the breakdown of what I owe- What it is, how much I owe, the interest rate, the minimum payment, and

how much of that minimum payment goes towards the principal. As you can see, even though my total minimum payment owed is $1240, only $519 of that goes towards the principal! That means I need to pay an extra $971 towards the principal!

To make that happen, my plan is to pay a little bit extra on everything to reduce the overall interest I pay, but to focus on paying off the lowest balance first! I prefer to use the snowball payment method- I pay extra on the lowest balance every week (I get paid weekly), and once that balance is paid off, just roll that into the next smallest balance. However, there is a little caveat to that right now. My Care Credit balance is the second lowest, but I am in a promotional period where I pay 0% interest instead of the usual 27.99%. That's an opportunity for savings I can't pass up, so I'll be paying off the Care Credit first.

My goal for this month, then, is to pay off as much of my Care Credit as possible! If I meet all of my minimum payments and reduce my Care Credit balance to $425 or lower, I will be on target for this month. I hope that you all stick around to see if I hit that target! The next update will be the end of April check-in and May planning on 5/1/21, so it won't be a long wait.

Thanks for coming along with me,

Jayme