I just had an epiphany.

Here’s how it began: After I finished rounding up my May budget and spending, I proceeded to update my Debt Progress page and realized that I only made a measly 1% change in my debt progress from the previous month.

Upon taking a closer look, I realized I’ve only lowered my student loans by $7,500 since the start of 2019!

I already had to change my goal from fully paying off all my student loans by 2019 to 2020. But the daunting realization hit me that at this rate, I won’t even be able to pay it off by 2020!

So where did it go so wrong?

Did I fall into the trap that I was so set on avoiding? Was I really committing lifestyle inflation?

I only had to look back at all my past monthly financials to see that, (gasp!) yes I may in fact have fallen into the trap of lifestyle inflation.

Case in point: since the beginning of 2019 I’ve bought a new laptop, a new Eufy (in my opinion, the better version of Roomba), gone over-budget on dining out/entertainment category many months, and gone on an international vacation where I definitely splurged.

I tried to justify these purchases. I really needed a replacement for my 6 year old budget laptop that takes 5 minutes just to turn on. The Eufy brought joy (Konmari anyone?) and made my life a lot easier. I had never gone on an international trip with friends before and hadn’t been on vacation since graduation 2 years ago. I wanted to enjoy the last few years of my 20’s while I still have all the energy and freedom to go out.

So for the last 5 months of 2019, I’ve used these excuses to make myself feel better about my lack of debt progress.

But at the end of the day, are these just excuses that’s keeping me from reaching my goal? I’m starting to think it is.

I’ve even become complacent in creating my goals in paying off my student loans. My 2019 goal was to put down $2,000 to my student loans every month. And now that I’ve had a second thought, that number is simply ridiculous!

I still have $80k debt! At this rate, it’ll take me more than 40 months (considering accrued interest) to finish paying it off! That’s 3 years and 4 months from today which would bring my payoff date to 2022!

And that’s simply unacceptable. So starting next month, I plan to increase my payments to my student loans to $2,500 +minimum payments. This is a slight increase from my current $2,000 payment but at this point, my budget is tight so realistically, this is all I can afford to add.

I do still want to max my Roth IRA for 2019. I have been contributing $1,000 each month and I have $3,000 left to contribute. So once that is done (hopefully by September), I will be able to increase my monthly payments to $3,500 for the last quarter of the year.

So that’s it for this short update. I just wanted to put it out there to hold myself accountable to this new goal.