SPS 4/6/08

Happy Sunday everyone! :) I hope it’s as gorgeous where you are as it is in Indiana this afternoon! It’s still a bit on the chilly side, but the sun is out! As long as you have a jacket or sweatshirt on, it’s just beautiful out there. These are the days that make you take a deep breath and say ahhhh… Spring is finally starting to win out over Winter. Thank goodness!!

You might be wondering about the chart by my head in this picture. I thought I’d let you see my motivation on this debt pay-off journey. This is actually one of the first things I did. This is a chart of all my debt (there’s another one at the bottom that got cut out of the picture), plus the baby emergency fund I’m trying to start with. When I sat down to do this in the beginning of February, I got online and found the current balances of all my debts. That’s on the very left. Then, each bar is divided into 10 blocks. So each block is 10% of that total debt. The right hand side is 0. So when the bars are solidly filled in, that debt is paid off.

It’s surprisingly motivating. I like seeing the whole picture right there. It was definitely necessary for getting started. It’s on the back of my front door, and you can see it from anywhere in the living room. I LIKE getting paid, and paying my bills now because it’s very satisfying to go over there with my highlighter and start coloring. It’s also good incentive to keep spending only within my income because I’m not sure I could handle going over there with white-out instead of my pink highlighter! :)

I need to get back to cleaning in my bedroom and change out some litter boxes, so I can take things out to the dumpster, and recycling bin while it’s so nice to do it. I’m finally making good progress on my bedroom, I’m so excited! If I had some quarters, I’d wash my bedding too… but that’s okay. The sheets will survive another week unwashed :) Make sure you check out Midlife Musings to see what everyone else is up to today!