Good for you. Way to go.


Reminds me of an old joke:

Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.

Cheers Tightwad - needed that laugh today. Over the weekend someone stole my postbox. Replacement cost $116. No insurance cover and no sign of catching the bugger who did it. Money came out of my personal savings account for breakdowns - lucky I had this money in reserve.

Good news. SL now below 13 grand - $12,965.81! Checked it on the website this morning and was very pleasantly surprised. So I then sent in another payment of $300.

My pay rise came in this fortnight. $17 a fortnight increase. Wow! Every dollar counts. This is going to be an expensive fortnight, I have to upgrade my drivers licence: $146 - just like that! Amazing, considering I've been on the road for 21 years and the state demands I show competence through their money making cards (so called drivers licence). Rant over.

I also have to shell out of more entertainment this pay period. People over from England demanding time and drinks. Humbug.

Wow... I'll never complain about the cost of my license again.

I just received my contract pay - just over $2600 . It went straight on to paying my SL. I kept $30 for myself, I figure I'll celebrate with a few cold beers over the next couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to seeing the balance drop to 4 figures, ie thousands instead of tens of thousands.

I should be getting some more weekend work in the next couple of months. This means another $300 in cash coming my way . Also my drivers licence upgrad only cost $110 in the end. But the remainder I had budgeted was used on smaller debts .

I just paid $450 into my SL account - in two days time it should register and I'll be offially into the thousands instead of in the 10s of thousands. SL should be be around 9600 by Friday. Cold beers all round.

congrats man, I'm a few years away from the 1000's myself, but can't wait to get there!

Cheers. It has been a mighty long time a coming. But I suppose it was a conscientiousness raising moment for me to realise: 1) I dont want to be a cog in the machine of office bullshit the rest of my life - what I do has been so watered down by imbeciles that is ridiculous, 2) I'm not on the "A team" in my workplace - I refuse to play golf with deadbeats who play keeping up with the joneses, 3) Debt stops me from doing what I want - so time to get rid of it - accumulate wealth enough to escape this sideshow of life and start making my own decisions in life. A bit of a ramble, but hey thats what I'm thinking today.

Got paid for my second casual job yesterday and spent, ironically, $40 immediately on the stupid workplace social club. This was the annual club "fee" that pays for all the usual BS. I only do it to add another layer of defence between me an managment. They think I'm playing their "game" by turning up to a birthday party or two. I spent the remiander $50 on SL - every snowflake helps.

SL down to $9,590.81c

Student loan offically down to $8,455.51c

I'm paying as much as possible at the moment because the tax year ends at the end of March and I want to get the 10% bonus on voluntary repayments. At my most recent calculation, and my maths sucks usually, I should have $1000 deducted. This means I've paid 10,000 extra since the end of last year.

Good for you! You'll be unshackled from your student loan very soon, I can tell! Nothing feeds the fire like watching the number drop...

Sl down to:$7,995.51c

Another thousand mark broken. I'm finding that at this stage I'm losing focus significantly (I wake up hating the thought of the commute and the morning meeting makes me want to scream). I keep daydreaming about quitting my job. This is a bit crazy as I spent all this extra money over the past 4 months trying to be debt free , and I suddenly want to leave my well paid job.

Hang in there! Two things:

1) Try to differentiate your feelings about the job from your feelings about paying off the debt. You have paid off 12K in LESS THAN SEVEN MONTHS! THAT IS AWESOME!!!! If you keep this rate of repayment up you will be done in no time, maybe even by the one-year anniversary of this journal! That means if you can tough it out for another six months, you will be debt-free. Even if you slow down your pace a bit, you will still be done very soon.

2)We all have bad patches at work. But if these feelings about work do not go away in another month or two, start looking for another job. Even looking might make you feel better. Your sanity matters. Having a smaller debt to pay off means you could take a bit lower salary and finish paying it off more slowly, especially if it meant you would be happier.

Thanks CecilyC - I keep repeating my holidays and pay as I walk around work, just to keep motivated to turn up. Honestly 11 years in the same job could be too long. This is just a bad patch and I can move on. I just have to remember its a job and not my life right?

I paid off another $450 off the SL yesterday - also I have a day extra of work on the coming weekend, $100 - I have yet to decide what to do with this snowflake. Do I start up my emergency fund, or just roll it into the SL as usual?

New financial year here so I'm looking forward to filling out my taxes (for a change!) and getting my 10% extra on the voluntary repayments I made - which is about $10,000. That means I should get a $1000 credit on my loan for being a good lackey of the SL system.

Just paid $600.00 off the SL. this should reduce it to below $6000.00 . Also saved $200 into my new vehicle fund from other work. Applied for another contract job last week, so still trying to keep going with work. Budget is cut to the bone and winter is almost here. Not much fat in my operating expenses, although should be increasing my funds by 30-40 dollars a weekend over the next 3 months throug extra hours.

Lots of pluses this post.

You are making great progress on the student loans!

I hear ya about the work crap. Some days (okay most days) I really don't want to be there, but what can I do. Hubby hates his job too. We're working on getting our mortgage paid off in just over 4 years then more options open up. Knowing that those options will be available helps me keep playing the game for now. And some days it is actually okay.

Don't get discouraged, you are in a great place with the farm.