Welcome to my February 2019 student loan debt progress!

If you are new here, every month, I post the progress I’ve made on paying off my student loans. I’ve done this since I first started paying down my loans in July 2017 and it has been so worth it.

I do this to hold myself accountable and to share my debt progress with others who are also facing debt payments of their own.

Debt paid this month: $2,000

Debt remaining: $85,761

I also house every month’s debt progress from the very beginning here if you want to check out the progress so far.

Updates for This Month

I put down $2000 towards my student loans this month which is the amount I’ve budgeted for so I’m glad to meet this goal.

The bad news is this will be my last student loan payment until April. I’m saving up for my vacation so I’ve made a decision to halt my student loan payments for March and will resume in April.

I also just filed my taxes and found out I actually OWE taxes which is a huge bummer because I was banking of getting some extra cash. Since that won’t be happening, I’m forced to resort to plan B which is to halt my student loan payments to save up in March.

The part that really riled me up was finding out that the $7000+ I paid in interest this year would not count as a tax deduction because  I made >$80,000 in 2018.

I was so upset to find out I owed money that I even tried to upgrade to the Deluxe version of TurboTax instead of using the free version I’ve always used every year to see if I was missing any deductions.

I thought I had nothing to lose since the Deluxe version is advertised as you don’t pay until you decide to file so I figured I can always go back to the free version.

What they don’t tell you is that if you want to go back to the free version, you have to hit the start over button which basically meant I had to enter in all my tax information all over again. Worth the $40 saving though.

February Budget

Fixed Spending

Nothing much here, just the usual expenses. I live at home but pay rent to my parents and am also paying back my personal loan to them at $500/month.

I am still trying to figure out what my portion of the cell phone bill is because I split my line with a couple of friends and we’ve had changes going on recently so I’ll most likely end up paying a lump sum for the last couple months once it’s figured out.

Variable Spending

I went over-budget in entertainment this month from my skiing trip. Otherwise, I’m definitely seeing an improvement on my spending from last month.

Investment

I put down $500 this month into my Roth IRA to finally max out my 2018 contributions (deadline for 2018 is April 2019).

My plan for 2019 is to also max my Roth IRA which I will start contributing $1000 each month starting in April as I plan to hoard most of my March paycheck into funding my trip and rebuilding my emergency fund.

Other

My car was due for a maintenance and I’m happy to announce that instead of going to the overpriced dealer as I’ve always done, I actually received a recommendation from a friend for a trusted local mechanic.

Going there saved me a whopping $50 than what the dealer quoted me even with a discount.

Goal for Next Month

Save up!

I only have one goal in March which is to save up $2000 for the trip and build back my emergency fund to $3000.

I’m already halfway there and since I am completely stopping my student loan payment and Roth IRA contribution in March, I expect to save up $3000 in March.