A fresh start

Happy New Year everyone! Have you broken your resolutions yet?

Since we left for Russia (almost a month and a half ago) I have not been keeping up with balancing our checking account. We've had money in there from our adoption loan so we weren't worried about the balance, so there was no pressing need to stress about budget when there was so much else going on.

But now it's January 1, and it's time to get back down to business.
I started a brand new Quicken file and started all of our accounts over fresh.
I also made a debt repayment plan, and according to my hopes, we will be out of debt the end of 2010. I don't know the exact figures, but we're probably around $38,000 in the hole right now.

A big chunk of this will be paid off from our Adoption Tax Credit which we will take advantage of this year. The rest of it will be almost completely paid off from my income. Brent's check will go for living expenses, my check will go toward debt. This is what we did when we had our business loan which we paid off in just under 3 years.

So here's our loans, and when we hope to pay them off:
Credit Card: April 2008
Car loan: Fall 2008
Small Adoption Loan: Summer 2009
Large Adoption Loan: End of 2010

We also still have a good start at an emergency fund, and we're able to still increase that and our retirement funds while still paying off this debt.
So, even though we're under so much debt here, I'm confident in our situation and our plan. Maybe we can even start saving for #2 soon...