May has been a month that’s made me actually worried about writing this article. Last month I made a negative $3,700 progress against my debt. This month we might have gone in the wrong direction.

5/15/26 Real Total:	Last Month Amount	Current Balance	Note
Main CC (USAA):	$0	$66	Still has Auto pays
Gas CC (USAA):	$0	$260	5% cash back on Gas
Chase Cards x3:	$63	$0	Churn card cleared, Ink card gets bonus on Cellphones and internet, Freedom cleared.
Robinhood Gold (new Main CC)	$425	$2,271	Shed stuff + Tires
Car Loan	$17,073	$16,642.72	$500 payment + interest gain. -$430
401k Loan	$34,729	$33,853	-$1,115 from last month (includes interest because it’s paid to me)
HELOC	$8,911	$15,821	Pulled Shed money. Paid $500
April Total:	$61,201	$68,913
Net Progress:	-3,779	$7,712

Holy Moly! That’s a big difference. I talked about the reasons for the Shed in detail, but it still hurts to see months of debt progress wiped out in a few weeks. These numbers do include having to put Tires on the wife’s car plus the repairs.

I also adjusted my paycheck this month, starting in 4 days my 401k loan should be receiving $600 per pay instead of $557. This will shave 2.5 months off of the loan. Next paycheck won’t clear off the Robinhood card, but it will cover the June car payment, clear out the misc bills and take a chunk down.

Ideally in June we can hopefully avoid a big payout for car repairs, shed building, and medical bills. At almost $500 a month in dividends it’s really difficult to focus on growing the snowball vs trying to clear all this debt.

$500 a month for 5 years is $30,000. That would pay off the car and the heloc by themselves over 3 years. Assuming nothing else was added and no other payments.

Using the dividends to reduce the loans faster will delay my snowball a bunch, but maybe this is the better play.

Either way it was a painful month. I have high hopes to the next month!

~~Minwing~~
Optimist