Happy New Years Eve and welcome to my December 2020 financial progress, the last of the year!

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.

Debt paid this month: $880.77

Debt remaining: $46,360.72

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 have loads of updates for the end of the year, but I have a year-end review post coming up so I will save all my updates and a recap of the year for that upcoming post.

Nothing new with my student loans. As it has been since March 2020, I have only made the minimum payments to my private loan while making no payments to my federal loans thanks to the COVID-19 deferment.

I did add some much needed colors to my budget sheet starting this month to make it a little more festive in anticipation of 2021.

December 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.

I finished my installment plan for my phone last month, bringing my payment down from $67 to $32 so I’ve lowered my cell phone budget to reflect that starting this month.

Variable Spending

Gas – Definitely drove a little more this month than last month but still under-budget from my regular $100 spending due to work from home.

Entertainment/dining out – Paid for some parking to get to my entertainment (hiking and meeting up with some friends outdoors). Also got some takeout orders that added up quite a bit this month.

Groceries – Under budget. Just bought the usual necessities.

Shopping – Over budget. Surprisingly, I only had minimal Christmas shopping due to no big celebrations this year. But I bought my bridesmaid dress for a friend’s wedding next year hence the overspending.

Miscellaneous

Car Insurance – My 6 month premium was due this month. I consider this a very cheap premium and I cannot recommend Geico enough considering this is a 6 month premium for 2 cars and 2 people (I pay for my mom’s car insurance as well since I bundle them together).

Savings

I’m still putting $500 per paycheck (totaling $1,000 per month) to my savings account. 

Since I finished maxing out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA for the year, these past couple of months I’ve just been hoarding some cash in my checking account for my future house down payment and periodically sending extra cash into my savings account.

I also worked a couple of shifts at my old retail job per-diem so it definitely helped put some extra cash into my bank account this month. I started to feel overwhelmed after working a couple of 50+ hour weeks juggling my two jobs so I’m definitely cutting back in 2021.

And that’s a close to a fairly non-eventful last month of 2020!

I’m intentionally keeping this post short and simple leaving out my regular goals section because I will post an end of the year review very soon with much more details!