From our original financial simplification post:

Of course, there are certain “purchases” we strongly feel were necessary and must pay for:  home/mortgage ($128,152.60), cars and RV ($16,653.62), college education for our children ($93,628.93).

Grand total: $238,435.15 as of April 1, 2015.  Our goal is to be debt free in 5 years.  Each of these 3 categories were “necessary” in our mind to give our children a stable environment and educational/professional opportunities.  We wouldn’t do anything different in these areas.

A year has passed since we started this blog and we have some financial updates!  We are close to living on one income to speed this along!

• Cars and RV $9571.89 (decreased balance by $7,081.73)

• Mortgage $116,445.85 (decreased balance by $11,706.77)

• Student loans $70,275.14 (decreased balance by $23,353.79)

  Total Debt Reduction = $42,142.29

  Our goal was $47,687.03  John is happy with our current total since we also paid for a wedding last summer for kiddo#1.  Barb is happy with any reduction knowing we had a wedding last summer!!

• We’ve also been trying to put some into savings each month – right now we have $15,881.84

•  Last year we had $1,827.58  

• Total savings in one year = $14,054.26!!  It’s hard to believe we were spending that much extra on “nothing”!!