Time for another update on the state of my debts! Check out my last post on this topic here.

Since it’s the end of the year I thought I’d do a recap of my debt repayment in 2012. I know it’s not technically the end of the year yet, but I highly doubt that my projections are going to be THAT far off in the next two weeks.

How Far I’ve Come

By the end of 2012, I’ll have paid off 47% of my total debt. I started out with about $38,000, and I should be ending this year with just over $20,000. That is such a significant decrease I still can’t quite believe I’ve made that much progress. I’m really starting to get somewhere with this debt repayment thing! Before, when I was tossing all that cash at my debt, it really felt like a futile endeavour. It felt like a crazy goal that I was going to start and give up in a few months, like so many things that I’ve done in the past. $38k just seemed so insurmountable, so impossible. I guess publicly declaring a goal has a way of motivating me though, because look at what I’ve done in the past year!  Now that I’m seeing such progress, I’m more motivated to make it disappear than ever! This pie looks so good I could eat it.

I’ve been paying the most attention to my student loan, since it’s got a higher interest rate than my car loan and also a bigger balance. My student loans came due with $26,720 owing on November 30th, 2011. Now, 13 months later, I’ll be finishing out the year with $11,500 owing.  Seeing that number makes me so happy. Not only does it mean that I’m just a hop, skip and a jump away from owing under 10k, it also means that I’ve been able to somehow wipe out 57% of my student loan debt in 13 months. It may have taken me four years to accumulate, but I think it’s safe to say that it definitely won’t take me four years to pay it off. I’m hoping that my income tax return will knock out another big portion of this debt, like it did last year.

Fun Facts About My Debt

• In the past three months I’ve paid off $4585 in student debt principal. That’s more than double what I paid off the three months before that.
• I’ve paid off double my debt repayment goal for 2012.
• It might be possible for me to pay off my student loans before the end of next year.
• When I first started paying my student loans back, I was being charged $4.10 per day in interest. Now I’m paying $1.86 per day, which will save me at least $800 next year.
• I should officially owe less on my student loans than on my car by May of next year.
• If, by some magical stroke of good fortune, everything goes as it is meant to, I could be completely debt free by as early as the end of next year. Maybe. Probably not. I give myself about a 2% chance of achieving that.

Am I Crazy?

That’s a lot of debt to pay off in such a short time. I often ask myself if I’m crazy for being so focused on it. I mean, I’m putting about 40% of my after tax income into the mouth of my debt monster. I could be spending that money on other things. Like a house down payment, retirement savings, trips to Europe, the list goes on. So why pay off debt? Why have I restricted myself so much in the name of paying off debt?

I suppose I’m a goal oriented person. For the four years while I was in school, the name of the game was Get Through School. Now that I’m done that part of my life, my new goal has been to Pay Off Debt. I’m terrible at splitting goals and achieving multiple things at once. I’m better at checking one thing off my list, before moving on to the next. I suppose at this point I’m like a dog with a bone, I’ve got my teeth sunk firmly into the idea of being debt free, and I’m not going to let go until I’ve achieved what I want.

What state are your debts in? I’d love to hear about them! Do you think I’m Miss Crazy Pants for being so hard core with my debt repayment?