2010 End of Year Update

This has been one crazy year. The good news is that we are well on our way to killing off the credit card debt. The bad news is that we had to use up some retirement savings to get there. That is the problem with only having one income, and it is something I want to remedy this year. I did some calculations and found that either we were going to end up increasing our debt or start from scratch and build up our retirement accounts again. I opted for the latter because it would be less of a strain on us emotionally and we would save money in the long run. We were getting ourselves into a bad cycle if we did not cut this off.

So, here is where we stand from the beginning of the blog:

As you can see, 60% of that difference is due to the estimated loss in value of our cars. The rest is because of less income really. We have tried to really keep expenses low, but we have had some unexpected medical costs.

For 2011, I already stated our goals here. The key really is to get our retirement accounts back up and to finish off that auto loan. I have been considered looking into a home refinance to know the mortgage down a few years, while still maintaining our current payment level. That will now be until I feel the home value is up to a safe level.