Welcome to my August 2020 financial progress!

If you are new here, every month, I post the progress I’ve made on paying off my student loans and on my savings. 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 progress with others who are also facing debt payments of their own.

Debt paid this month: $880.77

Debt remaining: $49,560.80

I 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’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel after finally making it in the $40k’s debt territory! Although I am so, so tempted to just pay it all off by dipping into my savings, I have to remember that I am in it for the long haul to gain financial independence, not just pay off my student loans.

As I outlined in my April check-in,  I am continuing with my $880.77 minimum payment to my private loan for the time-being. I’ve secured a very low interest rate of 2.2% earlier this year and I’m not in a hurry to pay it off as I’m trying to save up to buy my home.

I am now in my late 20’s and while I love my parents very much, if there’s anything this pandemic taught me, it is that I am ready to get my own place. While the last three years of being back home has allowed me to save up a lot of money and will continue to save me money if I stay, I simply cannot see nor allow myself to still live at home when I hit 30.

My subsidized loans are still at 0% interest rate thanks to this pandemic, so that’s the last thing on my mind and hence why I haven’t made any effort in touching it for the past few months.

August 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.

Other than that, my cell phone bill and Netflix make up the rest of my fixed spending.

Variable Spending

Gas – Surprisingly under-budget. I definitely thought I had been driving out much more this month.

Entertainment/dining out – Surprised I stayed under budget overall this month as I definitely went way over-budget in my entertainment and dining/drinking out category. I went on a kayaking  tour and went on a weekend getaway which meant a lot of dining/drinking out while exploring a new city.

Groceries – Managed to stay under-budget due to all the dining/take out I’ve gotten this month.

Shopping – did some shopping for fitness gear and personal care items.

Miscellaneous

Travel – August was quite a relaxing month for me. After all the quarantining I’ve been doing, I just had to get out and travel a couple of hours up north for a small weekend getaway in nature. This, of course meant increased spending in the dining/drinking out category as I wanted to try out new cuisines in the area.

Savings

With a fully funded Roth IRA, I am now focused on continuing my automatic contribution of $500 per paycheck to my savings account and occasionally moving money from my checking to my savings account when it builds up.

My savings account has actually been building up quite a bit since I’ve been aggressively saving for the last year to the tune of > $25k. I feel a bit unproductive, just sitting on all this money when I could be investing it especially when interest rates have gone down even on my so-called high yield savings account. 

But I’m sucking it up, diligently learning about the housing market and hoping that a good timing will come when I can pounce on a property. When that does happen, I don’t want my money trapped in a brokerage account, hence why it is just staying pretty in my savings account for now.

Goals for Next Month

Still working on last month’s goal of running. I’ve definitely gotten worse at running since I stopped the C25K program when gyms closed. Running outside in the summer is not my cup of tea. Plus, finding a fairly straight route around my neighborhood has proven to be quite a challenge. But I’m trying. 

I’ve been making sure to run at least 1 mile twice a week. It’s definitely a far cry from the 5K I had been aiming to achieve since last year, but I will probably restart C25K starting on week 5 all over again. 

Finance wise, I’m working towards a new milestone… which I’m hoping I’ll be able to meet and share on the third quarter update coming up next month.