I called my lender for the car to see what the process is for applying a payment to the principal amount (since I'll be doing that A LOT moving forward). 

Apparently, I have to call them 2 days after making the payment so that it posts to the account and they can apply the amount I want to the principal. I guess I'll be calling them every two weeks! 

We are on AutoPay that just pulls the regular monthly total, no matter what ($284.98). I guess we must've paid extra a while back because the amount due was only $184.86. So, I requested that the extra $100.02 go to Principal and it was done!! That's the first time I've ever requested that. 

Before starting this journey, we used to just send in extra payments without realizing that the money was going towards the next month's payment instead of to the principal. Thank God we've learned!!!

Cheers to more principal-only payments!