This post has two main purposes: the first is to show that you can pay off your debts rather quickly if you really focus; the second is more or less to shout to the world because I’m so happy I did it! So, what did I do? Well, I paid off my car! Let me explain: both the cost and a little about how I saved the extra money to pay it off. It took a total of 6 MONTHS, from the time I started paying until my last payment.

I bought my car in September for about $21,000. At that time, I paid $6,000 down, got an interest rate of nearly 13%, and would have to start paying in October. With that abysmal interest rate, my plan was to have it paid off by the following October. Once I started seeing the total drop after each payment though, I decided I wanted to aim for paying it off much more quickly. Below are the actual payments that I made to equal the total of $16,036.67:

$500                $1,000             $1000

$113.68           $1,800             $700

$600                $1,500             $860.24

$800                $2,500             $800

$1,000             $1,800             $1,062.75

So how did I do this? At the front end, I had some extra cash available from receiving a bonus for starting a new job. After I ran out of this, I changed to paying extra anytime I had more than $3,000 in the bank. This quickly decreased as I rarely had that much, so my threshold became enough to have a couple hundred left over after I paid my bills. Also, any bonus in my check (extra overtime, tax refund, etc.) went straight to my car. If you see the $2,500 payment, that was the morning I received my tax refund; I paid my entire tax refund, plus some extra.

Looking at how much extra I had to pay, you might assume I am loaded. This is certainly not the case. I make decent money, but the much more important factor was how low my expenses were. In the upcoming weeks, I will release some data showing my monthly expenses. If you want to pay off debt (or reach a certain financial goal), it has to be made a priority! You will have to make sacrifices, and it will not always be easy. Just remember that if you want to change your circumstances, you can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing. You need to make a change!