Welcome to my March 2021 updates!

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.

Student debt paid this month: $880.77

Student debt remaining: $43,945.22

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

Student Debt

I’m continuing to focus all my income on down-payment savings so I am still only making the $880.77 minimum payments to my private student loan. I’m also continuing to take advantage of the COVID-19 forbearance on my federal loans so I have not made any payments there since March of 2020.

March Budget

Fixed Spending

As noted since last month, my parents and I agreed that I would postpone any monthly payments to them while I am in the midst of the home-buying process. I will instead continue to save up and resume payments once the home-buying process is complete.

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

Variable Spending

Gas – Surprisingly only had to fill up gas once this month.

Entertainment/dining out – A lot of take outs and dining outs this month. I have no excuse.

Groceries – I must’ve eaten a lot this month. Usually as my dining-out spending increases my grocery spending decreases. But this month, I am way over budget on dining out and I almost maxed out my groceries budget as well.

Shopping – Minimal shopping this month. Just bought some personal care items.

Miscellaneous

Physical Therapy – My new hobby of running came with an expense. A couple of my friends that I started running with were hit with some injury which made me nervous that I might be next.

They go at a much faster pace than me, but I look forward to speeding up as well. These last few months made me realize how much I love running and want to keep doing it. The last thing I want is to get injured and have to stop. So I decided to make an appointment with a physical therapist to do a run assessment.

It’s quite pricey for two sessions but I figured it’s worth it as a one time preventative measure. I’d rather have my wrong forms corrected before it becomes a habit that’s much harder to break.

Car Maintenance – Took my car to the local mechanic for some quick maintenance. I would’ve had to pay more than twice the price had I taken it to the dealership for service. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it took me more than 6 years of religiously taking my car to the dealership for maintenance to finally find a trusted mechanic to do the same job for much less.

Flight Ticket – Now that the world is starting to open back up again, I booked my flight ticket for a bachelorette trip coming up in a couple of months. I was able to use the travel reward on my Capital One card to fully pay for the flight ticket! 

Savings

I’m holding off on making Roth IRA contributions while I focus on increasing my down payment savings. Midway through the month I decided to increase the amount of money I allocate straight to my savings account from my biweekly paycheck from $500 to $1000. 

This month, it came out to $1,500 since I only did it for my second paycheck. Starting next month it should be $2,000 straight to my savings account each month.

Goals for Next Month

After my disappointment in March on the home-buying process, I can only hope for the best but expect the worst in April. Rest assured it is still my priority.

Non-financially related, last month my goal was to finish the Couch to 5K program. Unfortunately, I’ve sort of hit a mental roadblock since that eventful day when I not only lost out on the home I wanted, but also failed short of completing a full 5K by a mere 0.2 miles. 

Since then, while I’ve continued to run, I haven’t been able to come close to running 30 minutes non-stop, let alone hitting the 5K mark.

I should probably go back a couple weeks and restart from Week 5 program onwards again. I just need to let go of my stubbornness of refusing to redo the C25K.

I even started training for the 10K already but feeling like I never truly “finished” the 5K really lowers my confidence each time I’m training for the 10K. It’s probably best that I master the 5K confidently with a couple of successful runs before moving on to new goals.