I think that most financial planning type people would classify mortgage as a debt. That is a bit scary for me as my mortgage is still quite high at this phase of my life. I think I tell myself that it's not a debt per se so that I don't become completely overwhelmed and give up
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As a side note, I quietly lurked on the Debt Dumpers thread all last year but really want to try to get a better handle on my finances and my spending so I'm hoping to actually contribute to this thread during 2019. Good luck to everyone with their financial goals in 2019!!!
ETA to add: I am very curious as to what your tag line means Karl66
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I've also been lurking for years, but I have some specific goals this year so I'm going to try to join in as well. I do think of my mortgage as debt, but the (high) property taxes as a living expense, since I'll never get rid of those.
My #1 goal this year is to pay off our two car loans. One will be gone in 6 mos and the other will probably be about a year, as I tack on the money that I was paying on car #1 to car #2. I'm hoping to keep these cars for a long time. But DH is a car guy and he'll have another one before long. Hopefully we will have some cash for this to offset the cost some, I plan to bank the payments once they're both paid off.
I also borrowed $3K from my kids savings account (which I fund, not really their money) to pay for braces that had a pay upfront discount. I think I owe about $2200 back to that account, so I'd like to pay that off within the year also. If I don't, I'm not too worried as I'm really just paying back myself.
I'd also like to increase my emergency and house fund. Which is all those house repairs that inevitably come up and derail all your hard work.
Our septic system is almost 30 yrs old so that'll need replacing sooner than later. I planned on saving up for it 10 years ago when we moved in, knowing it was old, but never did.
So this is the year to start that!
I'm supposed to start a part time job in the next two weeks, so that will go a long way. We do not need it to live on, so the goal is to use it for debt dumping!