Our Debt-Free Binder

Our debt binder has been instrumental in our debt payoff mission. I believe it would be helpful to anybody on this same journey.

I began with a plain 1′ binder in a color I found nice. You could make a cover for it if you desire. I preferred to leave mine plain without any label or cover. When it is sitting on the counter, nobody can tell what is in it.

The first page of our binder is our priority list. When we first set it up, we put it behind the printouts. I found that I was flipping back to look at it so often that I moved it to the front. We agreed to work on our financial goals in a certain order. We chose an order that made the most sense with our long-term goals. That is followed by a full list of all of our debts and the exact amount we owed on them when we started. We cross these off after they are paid off.

The printables I used for my credit cards, student loans, and overall debt payoff were from www.debtfreecharts.com and they are free to use. I printed out the needed charts. I filled out the charts with our numbers. I wrote what the paper was for on the top of it. I took the total amount owed on each account and divided them by the number of lines on the chart. Then I filled in the lines on the side of the chart starting with $0 at the bottom and adding the numbers going up to the current total amount of that debt at the top. I placed them in the binder in order based on our priority list.

As we pay down our debt, I use a highlighter to color in what we pay off. I really enjoy filling them in. This has also been helpful with our kids. They understand what we are trying to do when they can see it. It has become a celebration every time we get to color in a line.

After all of our printables are the monthly check-ins. On the first of each month, I write out a list of all our current debts and our total. I love to compare the original with the new ones. This has become a part of my monthly budget schedule that I look forward to. I used to hate budgeting and dealing with money because there never seemed to be enough of it. After almost a year, I’m proud to say that budgeting and paying our bills is easy now. If you are at the beginning of your debt-free journey, it does get better. There will come a day that you can do your monthly budget in minutes without any trouble.

This debt binder was extremely helpful. I hope it helps you on your path to becoming debt-free. Don’t underestimate the power of coloring in the lines. If/When you have a setback, you can flip back through to see how far you have come. That mind shift is life changing.