Welcome to my October 2019 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.

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

Debt paid this month: $4,633.65

Debt remaining: $63,092.49

Debt Updates for This Month

October happened to be a three-paycheck month which was much needed! I put all my extra money to making an additional payment to the student loans. I put down $4,500 + minimum payments this month, bringing my balance down to $63,093. Definitely a step in the right direction towards getting under $60k student debt by the end of the year. Can’t wait to be in the $50k’s!

Refinancing Update

I’ve done some careful consideration and have found what may be the right company to refinance my student loans to. Taking it all the way back to two years ago (!) when I talked about wanting to refinance with First Republic Bank but decided I had too much debt to risk going with a private loan.

Well I think the right time has come. I’ve gotten in contact with a representative who’ve given me the numbers. It looks like I may be eligible for a 5 years, 2% interest loan AND if I pay it all off within 4 years, they will refund me all the interest I paid during that time! 

It felt somewhat too good to be true. What this means is basically, I may be eligible for a 4 year interest-free loan?? Since I was planning on paying off my loans by 2020 (per my dream goal), it felt like a no-brainer. 

I even considered extending my payment to the 4 year mark so I can save more since my main reason for aggressively paying down my loan was to save on money I was throwing away in interest.

I did feel their required documents to refinance was a little intrusive. They not only require a W2 and recent paystub but also copies of bank and investment accounts. I’m a bit apprehensive that they’ll try to coerce me into moving all my investments to them but hopefully I can simply refuse.

My other main worry is that in 2018 I was in between jobs and First Republic Bank is known to target high-income earners, incentivizing clients with low student refinancing rate so that once the loan is paid off, clients will want to keep their accounts and investments with First Republic Bank.

My concern is, I don’t want to get rejected based on my 2018 W2 and not be able to apply again so I want to wait for my 2019 W2 to come out so I can use that instead.

I also want to get my loan down to $50k before refinancing as that would take down my payments to less than $900 per month which is doable and not as scary if I were to lose a job since I now have a *drumroll please…* fully funded emergency fund of $10k in my high-yield savings account.

Anyways, since that’s not going to happen till 2020, I’ll leave things be for now. A lot can change in 2 months so we’ll see. It certainly isn’t the first time I’ve thought about refinancing, only to back out.

October 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

Over-budget again. I guess by now it goes without saying, the main culprit is eating out. 

I dined/drank out a total of 9 times in October! That needs to get under control. Since I bring food to work and don’t usually eat out on weekdays, all these dining out happened over the weekend. I want to blame it on my expensive-taste friends. But I can’t fully blame it on them since I enjoy it so much. 

From other bloggers I follow, it looks like a solution to this is hanging out at home but the problem is that I don’t have my own place and it feels weird bringing my friends home when my parents are usually home too. Oh, and I almost forgot the biggest issue of them all, I’m a lousy cook.

I did make a development in saying no to experiences I don’t feel excited about when invited out by friends hence my below-budget entertainment category.

Miscellaneous

My wedding gift to my close friend was expensive, but no regrets. She’s a bestie.

The Airbnb I booked for my Thanksgiving vacation with the parents was the straw that broke the camel’s back, leaving me definitely in the over-budget territory.

Savings

My goal till the end of the year was to contribute $1,000/paycheck to my high-yield savings account. Since it was a three paycheck month, I contributed $3,000 total in October to my savings account.

Goals for Next Month

My goal for October was to put down $3,000 to my student loan payment which I exceeded. I put down $4,633 to my student loans.

I’m ~$3,000 away from getting out of the $60k’s mark by the end of the year, so goal for November is to put down $3,000 and finish up this goal one month early.

Since I’ve fully funded my emergency fund, I am debating if I should still automatically deposit $1000 to my savings account or to instead allocate that to my loans or to a brokerage account. That’s something to think about for next month.