The other night, my wife and I realized we haven’t updated our debt graph poster since we built it three months ago. A lot has changed in that time and we wanted to see the fruits of our labor. So, once again, I pulled out my trusty ruler and calculator and sat down to work calculating the percentages and the appropriate bar lengths.
As I marked and then trimmed the red bars, it felt as though I was physically cutting away at our debt. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to hold up the “huge” section removed from the car loan and how funny it was to try to pick up the small sliver of red construction paper that represented the home mortgage’s balance reduction.
Then it occurred to me: This is why we created this graph. Sure, I have the same thing on the blog and I can update it with relative ease, but the physical act of attacking these bars with the scissors gave a visceral sense of victory over our debt. In time, I will be able to completely rip away the remaining red and leave nothing but a happy field of green.
To make the graph even more relevant, I decided to add the snowball targets that I wrote about yesterday. Now as I cut away at the debt bars, I can see us approaching an even closer goal that will let me cut off even more red every month. If you have defined goals for your debt, I suggest adding them to your graph as well. Psychologically, you may be overwhelmed by the debt as a whole, but achieving a string of minor victories will help you build up momentum and keep you from getting discouraged. Avoiding discouragement is worth anything you have to throw at it because once it sets in, it will throw you off track faster than anything can.
It’s great to get back to the first project that got me truly interested in our personal finances. And now that I’m finally seeing results, there’s really only one appropriate thing to say: Goodbye debt!
