Well, we have nearly reached the end of July, and I have put off making this post until I could see what our actual total was after the bonus payment for the month. The updated graph is showing nice progress. Of course, it would be nice if it was moving FASTER, but I will just have to wait til next month for that.
Unfortunately, the whole car insurance renewal kind of threw us for a loop this month. Everything was paid on time, but I still haven't managed to put anything toward my $350/month savings goal. I know!!!! I'm really worried that it isn't going to happen this month. :( On the plus side, I did pay off the balance on the credit card that I created last month from my lawn supply shopping. So, I guess it's a good thing, although that $200 could have gone to savings instead.
I do still have one paycheck from my job coming in a few days, so that may be our one saving grace. I still have one bill to pay by the first of August, and this will be my only chance to do that, but if my check is over the $450 mark I will probably be able to pay that bill and put at least $250 into savings, which is better than nothing at all. Just have to wait and see, of course.
On a high note for the month, my raise went into effect as of July 21st!!! I only managed to jump one rank instead of the two they had predicted for me, but I will be up for review in another 6 weeks, and things are on track for me to make the next rank then. *Fingers crossed!*
Once again I had an awesome shopping trip for this paycheck and managed to only spend $110 and bought enough food to get us through three weeks. A lot of fantastic deals that I just could not pass up, and we are starting to get a little bit of a stockpile for once, instead of having only one option the day before payday. It's a nice feeling!
My last post talked a bit about our loans going on In School Deferment. In the past this has only worked for about 50% of our loans due to paperwork issues. This time, surprisingly, all of our loans went on deferment! I am still a little perturbed by this because it makes things a bit more difficult to figure when it comes to all the different payments and interest, etc. However it does allow for a new option: We were paying a total of $594/month toward student loans up until this month. I am going to round this to an even $600. Plus the $100/month bonus payment. SO I now have the option of applying $700/month to a single loan without making any payments on the other loans. This is good and bad because some of the other loans are unsubsidized and will accrue interest pretty rapidly. On the other hand, I will be able to pay off the smallest loans in just two to three months each, which is a HUGE motivator!
Now, it is time to see how disciplined I can be. The problem with not having required payments on all of these loans is that the money is technically free to float around in my account until I put it toward something. It is going to take a lot of willpower to use that money for these loans every month instead of buying a new couch or a new car, or pretty much anything else in the world that I could think of to spend it on instead. I am really really hoping I can pull this off through sheer determination.
Another issue that has come up lately is how we are going to be able to pay Jason's parents $200 a month starting January 1st. We have discussed the possibility of only paying $200 a month toward our student loans, and paying them $500 a month for the next few months until the first of the year in order to get a head start on that. It is $12000+ that we owe them, and it will take two full years to pay them off even at $500 a month without accounting for the 6% interest that they charge us. Once again, we are considering ways to maximize our income and just get this off of our plates so that it isn't weighing on us and becoming a source of family drama. So far, no real decision has been made. However, we have determined that whatever portion of our tax return does not go to the closing costs on the house will go to them instead. This may be a disappointingly small amount of money, but over time this one debt has come to be a much larger burden than we had anticipated, and it needs to go away soon! Unfortunately, that will also push out our goals for our student loans by quite a bit.
It is all soo frustrating. I swear I will start making decisions soon.
Pay the parents off first! That's my one advice.
ReplyDeleteMy dad has helped us out a ton with different things including leading us money when D's signing bonus did not come in on time to cover the backyard and window covers, and THEN turned out to be way less then what we were anticipating. My parents are super laid back about it, and my dad would never even mention the money but it weighs me down that we owe him. We've put a good chuck of our income a month towards this and are now more than halfway done with it. It's a good feeling!
Student loans are gross and I haven't even looked at figuring mine out yet. We were lucky enough that D's parents paid for all of his education and I paid cash for a good chunk of mine, but I still have about 31,000 as of right now, and it will be close to 60 once I'm done with my masters. :-( GROSS.
However, paying my dad and credit cards is currently our priority. Then it will be the student loans and the cars. Gah.
As far as extra income, there's a good deal of options online. Like writing papers and articles ;-)