Mechanical Monsters

Having been forbidden to purchase a walk-behind snow blower, my attentions turned to vehicles that can be ridden. A wheel steerable front-end loader would be nice, but they are quite expensive. So, my attention turned to skid-steer loaders. Buckets, snow-plows, cable-layers, roto-tiller, back-hoes and other attachments can be mounted on the things.

I'm thinking of an inexpensive end-of-lifetime used machine with at least a few hours left on it. A snowplow can also be attached, or alternatively an specialized snow-plow vehicle could be purchased. Since I would like to pay for the machine by doing local driveways, it seems like the skid-steer would be the basic all around option. A truck with snowplow would be too hard to turn in driveways.

shedding $20,000 in debt

I am paying off my car today. It's exactly one year earlier than when it comes due, though I had still planned to pay it off sooner than this. But it reminded me of where we were a little over a year ago. Brian had $11,000 in credit card debt and we had three car loans with at least $9,000 across them. Now all we'll have is $8,200 in school loans and our two mortgages. The next thing to attack is the interest only balloon mortgage for 15% percent of our home's price. I pay a lot extra on it every month but have still only paid down $4,000 in principle in two years. The interest rate is 8.25% so we'd like to refinance if it becomes possible. Brian is talking about buying a truck and financing it, I am really hesitant to take on another loan. The book Total Money Makeover by David Ramsey was what inspired me to really get serious about paying things down.