Baby is due in June and we have some financial clean up and pay offs to do before Baby Wooly arrives on the scene. Our goal is to pay off another $9,000 in debt before June to lower our monthly debt payments to an amount that Mr W can pay on his salary alone. Currently I owe $6591 on an outstanding student/consolidation loan, with an interest rate of 10.25%. We also owe my parents $3,000 which they lent us to help buy our house and purchase appliances (the house did not come with any). We are debt snowballing the $3,000 owed to my parents by making payments of $500 a month; this way the loan will be paid by June. The plan is try and pay off $3,500 of the other loan within the next month with any extra income we can scrape together. We are busy at work right now and I think this is feasible. The remaining we are going to have to try and debt snowball as well, paying off $500 a month ($180 above the normal payment of $320). I need to look at the budget and I think there may be a way to shave off some money off of our cell phone bill, dining out budget, and household item budget. We get our house assessment this week too, and I am hoping we have a decent increase. Last year the assessment was based on the state of our house Oct. 2006, at which point in time the house had not completely been built yet. Older houses in our neighbourhood are selling for $60k more than our assessed price (although I understand that assessed price and selling price are not the same thing), so I am hopeful. Long and short of it, in the spring I may yet again go on a debt consolidation pilgrimage to the bank or credit union if I can get up the nerve ;)
Why do you care? You're moving? If not, I don't see why you'd want to pay more property taxes... ;-)
Also, it provides leverage to obtain financing for a consolidation loan in the future. Last year our credit union wouldn't look at us because we had negative net worth (and may still do) so this is a step forward.
And third, there are always circumstances which make us consider moving so it is good to know what we can get for it (even if we don't move).
I will post about our assessment soon, because the value did increase, and despite an increase in taxes, I am pleased.