I cannot believe how fast 2018 flew by. As I look back on my 2018, I figured why not document the highlights. It’ll be great to look back on this years later to read a quick recap of my personal, financial, and work life in 2018.

Before I begin, I like to start by looking back at the goals I made at the beginning of 2018.

I started 2018 with $129,149 in student loan debt and in January wrote a list of short-term and long-term goals that I wanted to accomplish in 2018. They were:

1. Increase my credit score to >750 and refinance student loans to a private lender with a lower interest rate
2. Decrease my loan to <$100k by June 2018
3. Pay off current credit card and apply for a new one by March 2018

As you can see my 3 big goals of 2018 were all financially related. If I had to sum up my 2018, it was definitely the year I started “adulting” financially.

Read on to see how I fared on these goals (gotta keep the suspense going right?).

The Numbers

I started 2018 with $129,149 in student loans.

I ended 2018 with $88,927 in student loans.

Total student loan payments made in 2018: $42,354

Total student loan paid ever: $87,605

Yes, for the first time ever I am revealing my net worth numbers (though I doubt anybody really cares so no biggie). I actually started tracking my net worth a couple months ago after I started contributing to my retirement funds.

Since I wasn’t dumping all my money into student loans every month anymore, I had to find a way to track where else my money was going and how it was doing so I started using Personal Capital.

Personal Capital is a financial tool to keep accounts organized in one place and it really gave me the full picture of my financial situation by tracking my ~$20,000 investments that are never accounted or acknowledged on my debt reports.

I don’t want to obsess over the numbers and quite frankly it just looks downright depressing to be in negative net worth. So I’ll probably track my net worth on a quarterly basis.

All right, now that we’re done with the numbers, let’s get on with the recap!

A Bad Start

While I’m happy to report that I accomplished all 3 of my short-term goals (with some slight tweaks), 2018 actually did not start on a good note.

I spent the majority of January working and putting in lots of mandatory overtime hours at a contract job I just started 2 months prior. If I thought that was bad, I didn’t know what was coming for me in February yet.

The overtime hours did not last and in fact, business slowed down so much that I lost my contract job in February which led me back on the job hunt.

The one upside of losing my job was it allowed me to re-evaluate my student loans. I began to have second thoughts on refinancing (per goal #1) to a private lender as private lenders are far more unforgiving when it comes to delaying payments due to unemployment or unforeseen circumstances.

Instead, I reassessed my federal loan repayment options and discovered the beauty of the REPAYE program. I outlined in this post how I was able to get a $0 monthly minimum and pay only half my interest through this income-driven plan.

By the end of February, although my credit score was now well above 750, I decided not to refinance with any private lenders.

With that, I closed the winter months checking off goal #1 off my list with the success of increasing my credit score but changing my mind on refinancing to a private lender, choosing instead to go with the REPAYE program, staying on federal loans.

Spring Back to Life

As winter turned to spring, I was busy spending March and April desperately searching for a new job. Luckily I was able to find a new job in 2 months, but my new job was in the same field as my per-diem job. This meant I had to quit the per-diem job that I’ve had since I was in school that had always been a safety blanket for me due to conflict of interest.

As I was unemployed I spent the majority of March and April contemplating life which led me to write about ways that I was cutting costs, saving money, and budgeting in order to make ends meet. These were some of the posts I wrote during that time:

• How to Cut Spending: 3 Questions to Ask Before Every Purchase
• I Stopped Buying Makeup for a Year to Save Money
• How to Develop the Mindset to Start and Continue to Budget
• 6 Things I No Longer Buy (and Neither Should You!) to Save Money
• How Managing All My Finances in One Place Changed My Life
• I Don’t Pay My Credit Card Off Every Month and It Saves Me Money
• How to Have It All: Balancing Frugality with Social Life

Once I did start my new job, I was still living in fear of unemployment so I was hoarding my money and barely making any progress to my student loan payments. You can actually see on my debt progress page that my March and April debt actually climbed up because I wasn’t making any payments. So I did these three things to get my motivation back.

At the same time, I was feeling stuck at a job that I didn’t quite like and after an especially bad day, I decided to write what I’d consider a complain post but strangely enough became my most popular post to date about my profession.

I was surprised by the outpouring comments and it really seemed like many people in the profession could actually relate to my experiences so it felt good to know I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

July 2018 was a big month for me as I officially paid down my student loans to under $100k! This also marked my first anniversary since I started this debt journey so I was happy with the progress I made in the first half of 2018.

After hitting the $100k debt mark, I decided that I needed to reward myself for this landmark occasion. So I started relaxing on my super strict spending (spoiler: bad idea).

By August, I started questioning my priorities. Should I continue to pay off my debt aggressively or start investing? At this point, I had made very (very) minimal contributions to tax-advantaged accounts like 401k and Roth IRA. With all the job changes going on since 2017 (I’m on my third job in less than 2 years), I have yet to qualify for 401k employer match so I figured I wasn’t losing too much money by not putting money there.

Last year, my friend had introduced me to Robinhood which is an app-based stock brokerage that allows $0 commission trading.

As you can see here, I made a 31% return on the stock market in the span of one year so I (wrongly) thought I was boss. Based on these numbers, I made up my mind. I had to invest more and slow down on the debt repayment.

At this point, I had been following Dave Ramsey’s baby step of not investing until I’ve paid off my debt. But I’ve had my share of disagreements with Dave Ramsey’s methods.

For one, I don’t follow the Debt Snowball method, instead, I’ve chosen to go with the Debt Avalanche method. I also grew very apprehensive of only having $1,000 in an emergency fund as he suggests so I’ve increased that to $3,000 and am actually hoping for $5,000 emergency fund.

So I made up my mind. Choosing to invest before repaying all my debt would just be one more thing I disagree with him on.

FYI: I realize I may be sounding like a Dave Ramsey hater but actually really like Dave Ramsey’s teachings and I love his podcasts. I just don’t agree with everything he says.

While I don’t quite regret not contributing to a 401k fund during my time with my previous employers, I do wish I had contributed to my 401k from the start with my new company and at a higher percentage rate.

So by August, I decided to up my 401k and create a Roth IRA account which I thought would be a safe place to park my money until I was ready to take out my contributions (not earnings as only contributions are able to be taken out early penalty-free ) for when I can afford to buy my first home (condo dream per my long-term goal).

With summer still going strong, I wanted to enjoy my personal life more. But that came at a cost. I was spending more money on entertainment and eating out. I was also traveling more and after the many cross-country road trips I’ve taken in my life I decided to write a Beginner’s Guide to a Cross-Country Road Trip on a Budget which was a little off topic from this blog but I felt like I had some knowledge I wanted to share.

The Last Quarter

September and October flew by like a blur. Of course, the stock market came plummeting down and I had lost the gains I had made for the year. I really wanted to kick myself for not moving my funds earlier as I had plans to cash out my individual stocks as I thought the market was doing too well.

Of course, greed and laziness got the best of me. I waited and now my returns have gone back to zero (at least I’m not in the red).

Obvious lesson learned: you can never time the market. On the bright side, my stock market investments were very minimal by most people’s standard so I am glad to learn my lesson the hard way early on.

Closing It Out

In November, I spent more than half of my allocated student loans repayment money to pay down my credit card (which is still on 0% APR till mid-2019). Because of that, I remained stuck in the $90k-ish debt mark for what seemed like an eternity (since July so almost half the year!).

I was desperate in December, vowing to get out of the $90k mark before the end of 2018. And I did it! Barely.

Closing out the year, I barely scraped into the $80ish-k mark. Overall if I am being perfectly honest, I am not happy with the progress I’ve made this year.

At the end of the day, I know I should be happy to have paid off $40,000 this year, especially when I look at my 2018 spending and see that I am already putting down 76% of my spending to paying my student loans.

2019 Goals

Overall I really was looking for better results in 2018. This disappointment mostly stems from the hope I once had to fully pay off my federal student loans by end of 2019 which I can see that based on my results from this year, there is no way that is possible.

For 2019, I have two big goals I want to accomplish financially:

My new goal for 2019 is to get into the positive net worth territory by the end of 2019. I am currently at negative $68,287 net worth. So yes, even having $0.01 net worth by December 2019 would be an absolute success in my book.

In terms of student loans, the goal is to pay off $45k in 2019 which would put me into the $40ish-k territory.

…And that’s a wrap! Here’s to hoping 2019 do us well!