Wednesday, December 29, 2010

There goes 2010

last thing i remember, i was eagerly setting up this blog with post ideas oozing our of my ears, my brain churning out thoughts faster than i could get to my laptop and dump them all out onto the pages of the internets.

next thing i know, this year is 2 days away from being over, and there are no additional posts about stories of budgeting and working like mad and all of the monthly decisions that led to something wonderful at the beginning of this month.

what was originally a 5-year car loan was paid off in 350 days!  

with interest, i paid just under 12K.  $601.25 was my final interest cost, and when i divide that by what i paid altogether, that is just 5.02% of total cost.  does this mean my super aggressive and accelerated payments shaved off about .73 off of my original 5.75% interest rate?  

i don't know how much interest i've saved myself by finishing the loan 4 years early, but i'm sure it'd be well over another $1000, even if i did continue to pay about $100 more than the monthly minimum, so YAY for saved money that can now be used for something else!

it's weird, i thought i'd feel better after this one, but i have one more interest-bearing student loan to go.  i am playing around with my 2011 monthly budget to start saving for other things, but my fingers might get click-happy again and start accelerating payments on that loan until it's gone.  emergencies aside, it wouldn't take me that long.  but then there's that trip to italy i've been dreaming about....


Current balances: 
college loan #1: $4,482.89 @ 5%
college loan #2: $2,750.00 @ 0%