How we did it….
This morning I finally paid off my credit card. I am now trying to decide whether to:
A) Save 30% of my monthly income for a house
B) Increase my student loan payments
C) A combination of both.
Keeping in mind that I want to buy a house in a year….
So after hitting the internets I found a pretty inspirational set of articles regarding saving, and debt reduction at Canada Business Online called “How we did it…” Some pretty amazing stuff. Mind you the people in these articles are exercising EXTREME (X-Treme! ?) frugality, but there is a lot of tips/tricks to be learned.
I created a spreadsheet, that calculates my max mortgage amount based on how much I have saved in the course of the year, and how much of a monthly payment I want. It also calculates the my Total Debt Service and Gross Debt service. It takes data in the form of dynamic month by month savings, interest and loan rates, and Gross salary.
After crunching some numbers I think that I will maintain my minimum payments to my Student Loans (1%+Prime) and sock as much dollahs into saving for a house. Aside from the Loans I have no other debts, and my current total debt service is 12.7%, which should hopefully stay the same over the course of the year.
Any comments or advice would be grrrrayyyyt.
~S!