January 2010 vs. January 2011

I've always been a spreadsheet geek and have maintained an Excel file for all our debts and assets for several years - even when we were still debting, I tracked it in Excel. After posting earlier, I thought to myself, I wonder what kind of start our year was off to in 2010?

So, just for fun, I pulled up our January spreadsheet from last year:

• We had $3,847 MORE in medical and credit card debt
• We had $4 in our savings account (eeek!)
• We had $16,190 LESS in our retirement accounts

I'm sure our car loans were considerably higher too, but I wasn't tracking those then, for some reason.

Wow!  Now, granted, we paid some things off and added some new debt in those 12 months, particularly in the medical category, but this just floored me.

And then I got to thinking: maybe I should re-examine our retirement contributions right now. While I sure do love the matching funds our companies provide, I would really like to have that kind of money to pay towards our debt!

This isn't the first time this has crossed my mind. Your thoughts?