Time Is Going By Really Really Slow

I've created this blog exactly two weeks ago.  It feels like I've been blogging about our debt for years!  OK, not years, but at least a few months.  But in those two weeks, I've been doing a lot of research on how to save money by living frugally (that doesn't necessarily mean we are as we already maxed out our miscellaneous fund but we're definitely learning and being more aware), what kind of passive income I want to pursue after we're debt-free (real estate, dividends, interest, blogging, etc) and how to handle these new found incomes come tax time, and trying to stay motivated by reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and reading other personal finance blogs.  At what age will we be able to retire early.  Working until we're 65 does not appeal to me.  

I've been thinking a lot about the future recently and all the possibilities that'll open up when we become completely debt-free.  But I need to be careful not to think about it so much where I'll end up missing all the opportunities and joys that are put before me TODAY.  I should focus on today and today only, focus on my work for TODAY, enjoy my family when I wake up and when I come home from work TODAY and not think about the future as much as it hasn't even happened yet and things can change.  As Jesus said in Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."



Have you ever experienced different speeds of time?  When you're excited and can't wait to go on vacation in two month, those two months seem like an eternity.  Or when you order something on Amazon that you REALLY WANTED, and even though you have Amazon Prime (two day shipping) it feels like two weeks.  Or the opposite can be true as well.  When you have to give a presentation in front of 50 people next week, but it's already the day of the presentation  you ask yourself, where has all the time gone and you're ill prepared.  Or when you know you're going to get in trouble when you get home and what supposed to be a 30 minute drive home feels like 3.

Perhaps one of the reasons I feel like time is going by so slow is because we haven't made our first debt snowball payment.  It's scheduled to be drafted at the end of the month.  $1,600 smackers to my wife's post-graduate student loan payment.  Maybe time is going by slowly because there's a part of me that doesn't want to spend that much just to pay a bill.  The extra $1,000 we're paying can be used for a lot of other things.  But then again, if we don't pay off our loans, we'll be paying tens of thousands more in interest just for the student loan not to mention hundreds of thousands for our mortgage.  So I guess in the grand scheme of things, it's worth it.

Now that we have increased our debt snowball by another $200, I recalculated on when we'll be able to pay off the student loan and car which will be by March 2016.  I'm hoping to pay it off earlier as I plan on making extra payments when we get our tax returns over the course of the next two years.  And by paying off these debts early, I would save a total of $1,894.27 on interest.  That might not sound like much but the true cost of saving is more like $66,640.82 if I were to continue paying minimum required monthly payments on the student loan only on top of all the interest as well.

So instead of giving ourselves the daunting goal of becoming completely debt-free by 7-9 years, I'll give myself a more realistic goal of two years to pay off the student loan and car.  I think once we cross that first goal, paying off the mortgage by the next 5 years wouldn't seem as daunting.  One positive thing to keep in mind is that our incomes will only increase while our debts decrease as well as freeing up the funds we pay my in-laws for child care when our kids start school.