This is my spending for the month of July. Due to my volunteering, I was able to save quite a bit of money on food (they fed me almost every meal I ate for 1.5 weeks) on that category, but apparently to make it up to myself, I gave up those saving elsewhere. Still came in under budget though.
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. Hopefully this will be gone in 3 months
Direct Loan $ 6,942 ($157). The regular payment on this is 92, and I paid that, but my parents send some money occasionally to this loan. It’s a really, really big help. This loan started out at 12k I believe.
Great Lakes Loan $ 12,859 ($85) 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’m still thinking I made the right move. Either way, here is the status.
Ford Credit: $ 19,410 ($178): 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 $222 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: $ 41,229 ($1453) Another month where this number dropped. This is one of the biggest decreases I’ve seen in a long while, and its great. Unfortunately, I know this wont continue next month as I’m going on vacation (but got free airfare/2 nights hotel from reward points). It will be nice to get away and relax, but it’s going to pull a few teeth from my debt chomping machine.
How much debt did you pay down (or money did you save) last month?
Way to go on your Nelnet loan! The Department of Education sold one of my loans to these guys too. I have no problem with Nelnet really, but I hate the name of their company. Nelnet. It just sticks to my tongue. Ugh.
I paid $3,000 to debt before getting my second paycheck. After my second check (which goes to bills), I was able to pay $200 more. If I do well over the next week and a half, I may be able to pay $100 more! I love snowflaking. The hardest part of paying my student loans is watching the interest. I’ve become fanatical about checking the interest accruing every day. Seeing 82 cents adding up day after day after day is really motivating me to scrimp as much as possible! (I think I’ll steal your idea and do a debt post with my budget post at the end of every month! It must really help you to see how much progress you’re making!)
@red I dont know what their deal is (nelnet) but they have a dumb name and I dont like paying them. Hopefully I’ll be out from under their thumb soon enough. I always try to make 1 large payment to my debt per month, and usually it’s in the neighborhood of 1000-1200, but sometimes more or less, depending on what happened that month. I snowflake occasionally, but only on 1 loan (for my truck, I usually pay an extra 34.75 per month to round the payment out to 350).
I have really liked doing my monthly update posts. It’s nice to go back and look and see where i’ve come from
also, thanks for coming back. you either didnt read my archives or didnt find them completely off-putting.
@tips thanks for stopping by and commenting. I know how you feel about vacation (Im leaving tuesday for one) so my august picture wont be quite as rosy as it would be for july. It will be nice to get rid of my loans. I’ve been reading a lot of mainstream magazines and things saying you shouldnt forget about your student loans and try to pay them off early, because who wants to be paying for stuff they did in their twenties when they are 40? I dont.
Great job reducing your debt! We went on vacation in July, so we spent more than usual. (I tend to ‘live it up’ a little on vacation.)
Keep working on getting rid of those loans. I felt fantastic when mine were all paid off finally.
Nelnet was not around (that I know of) when I was taking out loans – I hate that name too!
Oh Lord, Jeff! I really enjoyed your archives! They were mega informative, and I can tell you’re passionate about the stuff you write about. So, of course I came back! :-p