Welcome to my February 2020 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: $133.65

Debt remaining: $54,317.53

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

Debt Updates for This Month

If my previous post or title wasn’t clear enough, I’ll scream it out loud and clear. I finally refinanced my student loans! I even created a separate post regarding my experience with refinancing $50,000 student loans with First Republic Bank here. 

But if that’s TL;DR: I refinanced my $50,000 student loan from Nelnet to First Republic Bank for a 5 year, 2.2% interest rate. I do have $4318 left on my Nelnet account that I didn’t refinance because of reasons I went into here.

My current minimum payment with Nelnet is $133.65 which is what I paid this month before my refinance went into effect and it looks like with the refinance going through, it has pushed my payments so far ahead that I’m not due for any minimum payments on my remaining $4,318 Nelnet loans until 2024!

Just to be safe, I haven’t taken myself off from auto-pay but will re-evaluate whether I want to slowly pay the remaining $4318 off sooner or later.

Remember last month when I said, “Take a nice look at this debt statement excel because this is probably going to be the last time this chart is going to look like this”?

Well, that’s a complete lie. I like my debt statement chart so much that I wasn’t willing to change to a new one even after the refinance. Instead I have now grouped them into 3 categories.

In red are the loans I’ve completely paid off, listed with dates that they were completed. In blue are the loans I didn’t end up paying back but now have no remaining balance due to the refinance. 

In white are my 3 current active student loans in repayment mode. My 2 subsidized loans are still with Nelnet and my giant private loan of $50,000 is with First Republic.

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.

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

Variable Spending

Gas – I now use a prepaid gas card that I buy $200 every other month so I average out $100/month in gas spending.

Entertainment/dining out – It’s hard for me to really separate these two categories since my main form of entertainment with my friends is to eat out. I celebrated a couple of birthdays this month so that’s where the dining out spending went and my entertainment spending mostly went to gifts.

Groceries – Over budget from stocking up on snacks for the weekend trip I took this month. Also got a couple packs of Emergen-C for me and my friends since we were all tired after our trip and didn’t want to end up sick. No jokes, snacks and Emergen-C are expensive!

Shopping – bought a new pair of running shoes and yoga pants on sale since I’m currently re-doing the second half of my C25K app starting at week 5 since failing last year. Spoiler: I’ve stopped exactly at the same week (week 8! Aka the last week in the program!) as last time since I got sick this time around.

Miscellaneous

Car battery replacement – last month when I went to get my car serviced, my local mechanic told me my battery was very low and I may need a replacement soon. Sure enough, my car ended up dying at work a few weeks later. Luckily, I had just gotten Geico’s roadside service added and they were able to start my car free of charge. The next day I got my battery replaced for $159.

Travel – went on a nice weekend trip but of course that cost some money. The $97 I spent this month was what I spent on the actual trip. I had already paid for the Airbnb and car rental last month.

Savings

To make up for last month’s no contribution to my Roth IRA, I contributed $3,000 in February. Sounds great at first, then the whole market situation happened. Definitely not happy that the market tanked by 20% since I contributed, but I’m not going to freak out and plan to continue to DCA until I max my Roth IRA.

Goals for Next Month

I’ve had a lot to think about this month (hence why such a late update) about what I plan to do. I have my minimum $881 monthly payment to First Republic starting in March so that’s definitely unavoidable. But I have been thinking about my Nelnet loans. $4,318 is no small amount but compared to my $50,000, I would love to be able to just pay it off and get rid of my Nelnet loans once and for all. I do have a lot playing on my mind though.

On one hand, I can’t lie and say I haven’t been swayed by the market swings. I’m hearing talks of the housing market going down (aka perfect time for me to buy my dream condo!) so I thought I really should be saving all my money in my savings account.

On the other hand, should I lose this opportunity to invest in the stock market while it’s down? While I don’t want to downplay the pandemic we have going on, I am a firm believer that this too, shall pass. And I think it will pass sooner rather than later, so I may not have that much opportunity to invest while the market is down. But then again, no one can predict the market, least of all me, so who’s to say we’re not in the beginning of a long recession?

Hopefully I will have more clarity come next month’s progress report. One thing is clear though, even if I plan to buy a home in the near future, I have nowhere enough in savings so I plan to raise my savings from only having my $10k emergency fund to actually start saving for a down payment which likely means a delay in paying off Nelnet loans.