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While I’m at it and this is the end of the year, here’s an update on the latest project. It’s going very wall especially thanks to an extra job I got for blogging that seemed to fall out of the sky in October. Darn well in fact considering we sidetracked to replace the freezer and put some new tires on the main Honda.

Best case scenario, we’re paid off all debts but the house in March, worst case scenario is we have to stop right now and pay for Chief’s orthodontics, in which case we should be done by end of June I think.

The goal by the end of the year is to have the emergency fund well in hand and then in 2008 we’ll go to baby steps 4 and 5.

Which will bring us to our first quandary, what to do about the cars? Best car is a 2002 Honda Accord. It runs great and will do fine for a couple more years. 78,000 miles right now I think. It’s the last thing that’s going to get paid off in a couple of months.

The other car is a 93 accord with 130k+ miles. Runs fine, engine will never die, but it’s getting more “character”. I think it’ll last a couple of more years no problem, esp. as all it ever does is go to work and back.

Back in our debt days, we just would have sold the 93, bought a new car with a five year loan and I drive the 2002. But that’s not the plan now, no car payments. So the plan now is bank the car payment when we pay it off and hopefully in a couple years we have enough to buy another decent car cash when the 93 gives out. That’s going to be dicy but it should be doable.

Part of the 93’s current charm is a hole somewhere ahead of the catalytic converter and it’s getting noisy, no AC in the summer, and it doesn’t like to start on hot days due to a busted relay switch. But people who know me know how relentless I am with old cars, and I’m pretty sure I can get this one to 200k if I want to.