Preparing to Pay Home Depot

All the money I transferred from ING last week is sitting in my account, waiting. Hubby should get a cheque tomorrow that he can deposit before the weekend. Friday is a short day and a tough one to get any kind of running around done before candlelighting, but I want to try to get to Home Depot to pay them tomorrow afternoon! I want Hubby to go into a branch and deposit his cheque at a teller so there won't be any possibility of any holds and then for us to go together to pay the bill off. He can pay $650 via Interac from his account and I can pay the balance from mine and then we'll be done!

Well, at least we'll be done paying that bill. We'll still be very tight for at least the first half of February and possibly for the whole month. But paying down about $1,800 of debt in the first 5 weeks of the year has got to be a pretty good feeling. I mean, generally speaking, I'd be pretty happy to be able to pay down $1,800 of debt in 5 months, never mind 5 weeks.

Once we catch our breath we can start working on the credit cards. I'd personally be thrilled if I could cut my credit card debt by 1/3 by the end of the year. $2,000 divided by 10 months is $200 in principal to pay down each month. And right now the interest charge is about $90 per month. So, if I can start to pay $300 per month on my credit card I should be able to achieve that goal. But can I really do that? I don't know. I know I've budgeted for at least $180 per month. That would drop my principal by only about $90 per month and would have me paying down only about $900 by the end of the year. Still, that's a $900 improvement over where I am right now. I'd rather aim high though.

I'm hoping that when I do our taxes this year I'll find that my BC Benefit increases once they recalculate it for July. It should. We both earned less in 2008 than we did in 2007. If so, maybe I can snowflake the increase towards paying my credit card. I never expect a big tax refund. It's usually in the $50 range, but that can go directly to paying down debt too.

We're going to be debt free sooner or later. Preferably sooner!