August 2010 Monthly Review

This was an interesting month for me budget wise.  I spent much more than I normally because of my recent vacation and I think this will cause me to have spent more than I took in this month for the first time since December, 2009.  I was able to trim back quite a few categories last month and this month to make up for it, but I still blew my budget on some of the categories, mostly because I was on vacation.  Hey, during restaurant week, you’ve got to take advantage of the deals, right?!  (I spent almost half of my entire monthly food budget and 150% of my dining out budget on 1 meal while on vacation.  It was TOTALLY worth it, the food was great and the company was fantastic!)  Other categories I went over budget in this month were:

Student Loans:

This is by far my largest liability at this point — It’s unsecured and it’s just lame run of the mill debt.  I’ve got 3 loans from 3 different banks (way to go, feds!).  These loans came from 6 years of school, so I got out pretty good.

Nelnet Student Loan $ 2,018 ($1023) This normal payment is $50, which I have been paying.  This is my next target, as you can see.  I just checked the website on this balance.  It says I don’t need to make a payment until April 2012.  Along with this, I got an offer to enroll in an auto debit for a .25% interest rate deduction.  I’ll be forgoing that in an effort to keep the pressure on to repay in 2 more months!

Direct Loan  $6,692 ($250).  The payment for this loan just got dropped to $77 per month.  Not sure why, but I’m not complaining.  This is next on the hit list.  On a side note the subtraction on this was extremely hard for some reason this month.  I had to google the answer

Great Lakes Loan $ 12,709 ($150) Just paid the standard payment of $150, but because of interest, the amount it went down was much less than that.  Seeing how much of my payment isnt applied to the loan balance really, really bothers me.  My snowball will soon roll up on this too!

Truck Debt:

This is for my vehicle.  I had already started trying to become debt free when I bought this, so I was quite torn as to wether or not to take on new debt while I was trying to eliminate other debt.  If you want to read more about it, check here, here and here.  Despite most of the advice I heard, I went ahead and took out a loan on this.   I made the right move.  Either way, here is the status.

Ford Credit: $ 19,122 ($288): I usually pay extra on this loan, but I’ve gotten so far ahead that I decided to make a smaller payment and put the extra cash to my small student loan so I can get rid of it!  Apparently, I’ve paid $255 so far this year to service this note.  It will be nice when all that cash is back in my bank account.

Total Debt Level: $ 40,541 ($688)

This isn’t quite as much as I have been paying down, but I was able to have some fun this month.  It looks like I could have paid off my student debt with the money I spent on vacation and the lost wages from time off work.  While debt freedom is something that’s at the top of my  list, it’s important to ease off the gas once in a while and enjoy what you’ve accomplished thus far and re-focus your scope, so to speak.

How much debt did you pay down (or money did you save) last month?

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4 thoughts on “August 2010 Monthly Review”

  1. I’m just struggling with a small medical bill that I’m refusing to pay on principle. My insurance company says I wasn’t covered because I wasn’t a student, and I’ve sent them the transcripts to prove I was enrolled, a full time student with stellar grades at the time I went to the doctors. Hoping to have this cleared up by the end of the month.

  2. No joke. It really bugs me every time I call I get a different answer. I might just bite the bullet on this one. It’s getting TOO annoying.

  3. Jeff,

    Hello. I just ran across your blog and in reading this post, thought that maybe you would be able to help with a question I had about paying off loans early, and specifically nelnet loans. With nelnet, I’ve never seen the option to apply extra payments “towards principle.” I contacted them and they told me if I wanted to apply the extra toward the principle, I would have to mail in a check with those special instructions. I’m just not sure what happens if I pay extra without specifically telling them to apply it toward the principle. Do you know? I see that you’re paying off a nelnet loan and you don’t owe payments until April 2012. What happens when you finish paying off your loan? Is the loan paid off immediately, or does the original loan amortization schedule still play out? Have you paid any other nelnet loans in full? Sorry if this question is dumb… this simple thing really confuses me and it’s prevented me from paying extra on any of my nelnet loans.

    Thanks,

    Tim

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