Getting Rid of My Debt, Part 13 (Catching Up)

Been a few weeks and I haven’t reported in on my progress. Well, not much has changed since the past two weeks, but that is about to change this week. I should have been able to pay my extra $430 to my private loans, as usual out of my regular paycheck, but this month that didn’t work out. I am now taking an e-course called Dreaming of Mortgage-Freedom that is run by Hari of the Tiny House Family blog and one of our first assignments is to start tracking our spending.  (To get to where you’re going, you need to know where you are right now.) She suggested an app and I know others who do the same thing. (By the way, she was on the Today Show this morning! But for me, sometimes, it’s literally the writing down of everything with pen and paper that helps me to see things clearly. And here’s what happened this month:

I bought some new workout gear to the tune of $122.  Now, before you get disappointed, I should tell you that some of my workout gear was starting to shrink from so many washings, and also, some of my shirts could be toddlers by now if I were to celebrate their birthdays.  Also, I found I was wearing the same two or three pairs of shorts over and over, and well, with the spring weather (supposedly) coming sometime in the future, I know I will be wearing more workout clothes every day, with my commuting by bike. So, these are items from which I will get a lot of wear.

My pets. I bought all of them collars and name tags over the past month or so. Osito already had one, but well, I have five cats, so it all adds up. But, again, it’s money well spent. I also bought some pee pads for Osito – it costs me about $22 for 100 of them, but they last me quite a while (usually a few months.) And with the weather being nicer, (again, supposedly soon), she will be walking outside a lot more. (In case this is the first time you’ve read my blog, thanks, and just know that Osito is my 12/13 year old short-haired chihuahua and she hates the cold as much as her mom.)  I also bought some extra food for them from this awesome website, Chewy.com, as well as cat litter. So it’s stuff that will take a while to go through and use all of it.

I was paid from my freelance job last week (!) so I will again put 30% of it aside for next year’s taxes. The rest will go toward paying the private student loan and to my tiny house fund. My plan is to have the private student loan down under $18K as of this weekend. As of right now, it’s $18,951.  My monthly payment of $167.11 was just processed today and I made an extra payment of $432.89 to equal $600.  I will be putting about $350 from my freelance job to the balance and that should bring me down just under $18K!!

To be celebrating a loan still at $18K may sound kind of sad to some of you who don’t have the student loan debt I have. But to put it in perspective, when I make that payment of $350, that will equal $1508 in student loan payments for the month. Can you imagine what I could do with that money if I didn’t have to pay it all to loans??!!!  (And in case you are wondering, yes, every month I regularly make payments on my student loans in amounts that are more than my rent.)   Believe me, the student loan system we have in place in this country is quite messed up. True, no one held a gun to my head while I signed all those promissory notes, but I really think there should be some mandatory classes that students have to go to before signing for those loans. They need to know what they are really doing to their future. And the tuition rates just HAVE to stop rising out of control.  Where I work, tuition is around $53K/year and that’s JUST tuition. You haven’t eaten yet for the year, or put a roof over your head. That’s more than many families make in a year. It’s  just completely insane. And my school is not alone, far from it.

Once my loan payments get posted, I’ll provide an update of my balances. And I will also share with you the methods I use to not get overwhelmed by the knowledge of owing more than $117K in student loans. (Besides the fact of knowing that it’s not the same as credit card debt, of which I have NONE.)

Oh, and did I mention that I’ve started to get paid from my gym front-desk job? It’s not a lot but every little bit helps. So whenever they ask me if I can work any extra hours, you know what I say! And the money is directly deposited into my tiny house fund, so I never even touch it with my hands. 🙂  (It’s cool to open up your bank account and see that the number has somehow risen overnight.)

Until then, if you have liked this post, please hit like or subscribe! And please post a comment, I’m always excited to see them when I open up my blog’s dashboard!