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Archive for April, 2017

Staying on task

April 22nd, 2017 at 04:50 pm

Loan balance after the last payment hit: $3569

Today I caught up some later-billed budget categories from March and sent in another payment of
$533

160 from extra work hours
25 cell phone savings April
55 IBR savings April
68 parking category savings March
225 other misc categories/snowflakes March

Once the balance gets under $2000 I’ve been considering loaning myself the money from my EF to just pay it off and save on the interest difference. It makes senses mathematically and my savings are honestly probably higher than need be given my debt. On the other hand I’m usually a worst case scenario planner and messing with the EF category doesn’t strike me as a good habit to get into. Still thinking about it.


During school I took less than than the max amount of student loans every semester and worked part time jobs to help supplement living expenses. The financial aid office would send you a summary of the charges for a semester and how much you could get in loans, then you could go in and manually reduce the amount you were requesting before it was submitted. I don’t remember how much I adjusted it down back then, but I’m curious how much my balance would be today with interest if I’d taken the full amount possible.

Extra payment

April 21st, 2017 at 12:19 am

Sent a $715 extra payment to the student loan yesterday- $400 from a tax refund, $25 difference from cell phone plan, $289 from prior raise category last month. (Every time I cut costs for a recurring bill or get a raise I leave the budgeted amounts the same on my spreadsheet, then send the difference to debt or savings.) Current balance is $4280 before this payment.

Tomorrow’s paycheck will include $160 from picking up extra time at work for the pay down along with an extra $80 savings from some other budget categories for April.

The weather is nice enough to avoid any heating/cooling utility costs and I’ve been using the drying rack for laundry. This weekend I need to replenish my stash of homemade frozen meals for work lunches, although I have some odds and ends to take tomorrow.

Better late than never!

April 8th, 2017 at 04:24 pm

Still here and lurking around! Can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted!

Recent financial events- this month has already been pricey due to some necessary car repairs. Grateful that 1) they were able to fix everything and 2) had the money for this in a special account and wasn’t trying to scramble to come up with $840 out of one month’s budget. Still, it will be nice to start replenishing this fund!

Since last posting I slowed down loan repayment to divert money toward my Roth for 2016, so the balance is $4780 on my high-interest loan (7.6%). My new goal is to knock this out next! I have state and federal tax refunds coming and picked up some overtime this week, so should get a good jump on it in the next couple weeks.

Lately I've been reading this "Money Diary" feature: http://www.refinery29.com/money-diary

Women in different geographic locations making different salaries share every penny they spend during a typical 7 day period. Very interesting to see how different people prioritize their spending, and definitely makes me more aware of little purchases during my own day. It's also an interesting read because this is not a personal finance-oriented website, so the approaches can be very different than you'd see here.