It's summer, three weeks past the end of the school year, and our debt repayment has slowed drastically. Since I get no money from school when I'm not working there (unlike my wife, where they prorate her money and pay her every two weeks for the whole year, not just during the school year), our income -- at least for the time being -- has dropped by a fair bit. It hasn't dropped enough to put us in the poor house or anything quite so awful, but it has made a difference in how much extra we're able to put against our loans.
It's at times like this I'm reminded of the movie Contact, where the young Ellie (the old Ellie is played by Jodie Foster, but heaven and IMDB only know who played the young Ellie) is playing with her ham radio and is having trouble finding anyone on the other end. Her father comes in and tells her the secret to ham radio success: "Small moves, Ellie. Small moves."
Even at times like this where I can't put $300 or $500 at a time toward a loan, I can still put $15 or $25 toward them. True, it doesn't drop the balance as much as I might wish, but it does drop it nonetheless. If I stop to think about the whole life of the loan, even $300 is a "small move" toward paying it off, but as I'm not likely to get $80,000 or so to toss at the loan at a time, small moves is the only way to get it paid off.
No matter what the goal -- financial, physical, career, or whatever -- small moves are the best way to get it done. Small moves + persistence = success. Anyone else succeeded with a goal using small moves? Let us know in the comment section.
