Three down, five creditors to go

Well, April and I have paid off three more creditors. We now have no more credit cards. As I said in an earlier post, credit cards were not a big part of our total debt. The largest part of our debt is school loans, which are a pain in the…neck.

Next we will pay off the loan for April’s laser eye surgery. This was worth the money and will only take two months to pay off. After that, the focus will go to my Saturn, which I have had for 5 years. This is not paid off for the fact that I leased the car first, then ended up buying.

My advice: Do not lease, ever! The only reason for doing this would be that you absolutely want a new car every three years. While the idea sounds nice, it robs you of your hard-earned money. Why not just buy a nice used car and keep it for about 10 years (or more if you maintain it properly) with no payments. This sounds like a better idea.

April and I both feel that we made a mistake of buying a new car to replace her old Pontiac Sunfire. We also feel that we can get at least 10 years on her Honda. Of course, I am hoping to keep it running much longer than that. We will be paying the Honda off before the 5 year time period. I estimate that we can pay the car off in 2 years. We bought the car in March, so I will be noting our progress. With my two year time frame, this puts the pay off date as March 1, 2007.

School loans are the lowest priority so they are going to be the last to be paid off. April and I have decided that when we get to this point, we are going to save money for a house and start planning for the sound of little feet, and I am not talking about another cat.