July wins: taking steps to pay off our mortgage and setting up college funds

July has been a blur. Mostly because I’ve been keeping tiny humans alive. But we had some wins that I wanted to share. This is something I will do on occasion, but I am not going to commit to doing it every month, mostly because I will forget.

We applied two small extra payments to our mortgage.

If you didn’t know we are planning on having our mortgage paid off by December 2022. We had planned on starting to apply more to our principal in August, but since our daughter was born early we started in July.

We made two small payments. Combined they were about 3/4 of our monthly payment. But it was enough to knock two entire months off the life of our loan.

Don’t let anyone tell you small steps and small amounts don’t matter. When those dollars work together and go toward a bigger purpose it adds up fast. .

We opened Libby’s 529 college savings account.

We opened our older two boys 529 accounts in the spring of 2014 when they were 2 and almost 1. We opened Jesse’s when he was two and we were finally on the ball and opened Libby’s at two weeks old. We only apply about $85 a month in there. But that is fine.

Our philosophy at our house is do what we can with what we have.

I cash flowed my boys @classical_conversations tuition .

We homeschool. But one day a week we go to a community program called Classical Conversations. It’s awesome. But it’s pricy. (However, it is way way cheaper than private school.) I paid the boy’s tuition out of my Google Adsense revenue from YouTube.

Wins don’t have to be huge. SMALL STEPS MATTER. Please don’t listen to people who tell you otherwise. I would love to hear your wins. Leave me a comment and tell me!