Welcome to my July 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: $50,357.16

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

As I outlined in my April check-in,  I am continuing with my $880.77 minimum payment to my private loan and not making extra payments for the time-being.

I’ve finally reached the $50K debt mark and next month I’ll finally be in the $40K’s of student debt so definitely a huge celebration coming from $171K debt, to going under 100K debt, to paying off $100K in student debt, to now being in the 50K’s!

July 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 – Gas prices are going up and I’ve also been driving a bit more this month.

Entertainment/dining out – Eek, definitely over budget. While I’m still social distancing, I am finally starting to see a very small group of friends and we’ve been ordering take out as part of our entertainment/eating activity. Plus, with the summer month, I’ve been ordering more summer drinks.

Groceries – Under budget, since I’ve been getting much more take-outs. 

Shopping – Sad to say I broke my 4 month streak of being under-budget. I ordered some new pants to replace some well-loved old ones, and did some amazon shopping.

Miscellaneous

July was a blur. Since I’m late in updating my monthly budget, I almost decided to skip this month. Good thing I didn’t. If I hadn’t gone over to Mint to look through my budget, I’d have forgotten all the extra expenses I paid for this month.

Car insurance renewal/smog check – my yearly car renewal was due this month and along with it was a notice for a smog check. 

Blog renewal – blogging is therapeutic and a hobby for me, so I didn’t quite mind this cost of renewing my domain name once a year.

Physical exam – I am furious with this charge of $90 for what should have been a free yearly physical exam I had in 2019. I even complained to the doctor’s office and insurance. Apparently I was charged lab work fee for getting my vitamin D assay which was not covered by the insurance as part of a preventative care. Why I wasn’t told this at all during my visit remains a mystery.

Yes, I am angry about being charged an unnecessary $90 when I’ve always known I suffer from low vitamin D and always gotten OTC vitamin D supplement anyways. But what angers me the most is the lack of transparency in our healthcare system. The fact that the medical office told me they had no way of knowing how much I would be charged until they actually gave the service and bill the insurance absolutely blows my mind, especially when I now have to bear the responsibility for something I had no say in.

After a back and forth battle with my insurance and doctor’s office for about half a year on this charge and getting nowhere, I’ve decided to finally let it go and move on for my own sanity.

Taxes – I owed taxes in 2019 and since the tax deadline was changed to July, I postponed my payment till this month. I’ve definitely made some changes to my withholding to make sure I won’t owe or owe very little next year.

Travel – went on a weekend getaway earlier this month which was much needed for what 2020 has put us through.

Savings

I continued my automatic contribution of $500 per paycheck to my savings account and since my Roth IRA is now fully funded, I’m simply saving the rest on my checking account and slowly moving it to my savings account when it builds up to save for my first home.

Goals for Next Month

To be honest, I don’t really have any new goals for August. My goal since the beginning of this year was to get to $100K net worth so that goal still stands. Otherwise, I’m pretty much just waiting for 2020 to be over and hoping to keep my job and my full time position in this economy.

Non-finance related, I unfortunately stopped running since gyms closed and I couldn’t run on the treadmill where I usually do my runs. I’ve since started running outside but very inconsistently. Now I am trying to run at least 3 times a week and build up to my goal of running 5K nonstop again so I’m definitely hoping to keep that up in August till the end of the year.