Snowball Effect- Debt Reiief

My husband and I have been wanting to get out of debt, more so me than him because I sit close to $60,000 in student loan debt and am still taking graduate courses.  We have dabbled with the Dave Ramsey plan of getting out of debt.  The cash budget, is very hard for us.  This is a challenge in it of itself.  We now have two separate bank accounts and one account is our daily living money, and one is strictly just for bills.

Some piece of debt relief that we have done is the snowball effect.  For those of you who unfamiliar with the snowball effect it paying extra on one loan.  When that loan is paid off, you take the what you paid over and the payment from loan that you paid off and put it toward your next loan.

For example:

Loan 1:  $1000
     Minimum payment $50 +$50 over pay means you can have this paid off in 10 month opposed to 20 months.

Loan 2:  $2,000
      Minimum payment $50.  You start paying $50 for 10 months until Loan 1 is paid off.  Then on month 11 you will pay $50 + $100=$150. After 10 more months, this loan will be paid off. This loan should have taken 40 months to pay off, but instead using the snowball effect will take 20 months to pay off.

Loan 3: $3,000
      Minimum payment $50.  You start paying $50 for 20 months until Loan 1 and Loan is paid off.  Then on month 21 you will pay $50 +$150= $200.  After consolidating the payments, it will take 10 more months to pay off. This loan should have taken 60 months to pay off, but instead using the snowball effect will take  a total 30 months to pay off.

This $6,000 of debt should have taken 120 months by paying the minimum  every month to pay off got cut to 30 months.

My husbands student loans are now paid off, now onto focusing on mine!