November 2019 Monthly Debt Update
Welcome to my November 2019 Monthly Debt Update! If you’ve been around for a while, you know that each month, I share a recap of my monthly income and expenses, so you can see exactly how my budget and debt pay-off go each month.
I usually provide a spending breakdown down to the penny, and I did that for the first 6 months of this year. You’ve got 6 full months of spending reports and budgets, all down to the nitty-gritty, archived here on the blog. But, preparing these spending reports have become so tedious and time consuming, that I’ve decided going forward, I’ll just be sharing a summary of my debt pay off progress.
OK, with all that out of the way, let’s get started!
Extra Debt Payments
Our entire baby step 2 debt is comprised 100% of my student loan debt (undergrad + law school combined). When I first started paying attention to my student loan debt in January 2017, it totaled $104,901. Since then, we have been working steadily to get it paid off as fast as possible, and our goal was to become debt free by the end of 2019.
I am sooooo happy to announce that we hit this goal! In case you missed it, we became debt free this month, when I made my final student loan payment on November 15, 2019.
In addition to my standard monthly payment of $375.63, all throughout this journey, I made an additional payment to my student loan each payday (I get paid twice a month). Here I break down where the money came from for each of those payments, so you can see exactly how I did it.
Extra Payment - November 1 , 2019 = $5,340.00
For this extra payment, $1,030.67 came from the November 1 paycheck. But, where did the rest of the money come from? (This list is way longer than usual since we paused our debt snowball last month.)
$4,140 came from working LOADS of overtime. My firm saves our overtime and “banks” it for us in an account at work. For various reasons, I let it pile up and take a lump sum distribution only a few times per year.
$10 leftover in the Halloween budget that we didn’t spend.
$50 I budgeted to get my nails done but then came to my senses and wised up and realized getting out of debt matters more than pretty nails.
$3.28 leftover from my “cushion/buffer” from paycheck 2 of October.
$1.68 leftover in the life insurance budget (I budget $50, but the actual payment is $48.32)
$8.29 leftover in the Birthdays budget (I usually let this pile up and roll over, but I was on a mission this month to get out of debt!)
$2.22 leftover in my Dropbox budget.
$60 from selling things on Facebook.
$18.94 leftover in my cushion/buffer from paycheck 1 of October.
$2.97 leftover in the cell phone budget.
$4.37 leftover in my student loan budget (the payment is $375.63, but I budget $380 to make it easier).
$3.21 leftover in the Netflix/Hulu budget.
Extra Payment - November 15, 2019 = $1,526.94
(THIS WAS OUR FINAL STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT EVERRRRR!!!!!)
For this extra payment, $1,030 came from my November 15 paycheck. But, where did the rest of this money come from?!
$35 came from selling things on Facebook.
$125 came in the form of cash back and referrals from Ebates/Rakuten
$336.94 we pulled from savings to make up the difference we needed for the final debt payment.
Yes, we took money from our savings to make our final debt payment. Since we keep more than $1,000 in our baby step 1 mini emergency fund, this move was Dave Ramsey approved.
Total Debt Update
I began my debt free journey in January 2017 with $104,901 in student loan debt. I started this month (November 2019) with a student loan balance of $7,237.
As of November 15, 2019, the balance is $0.00!!!! With this month’s debt payments, we have officially paid off all $104,901 of my student loans and baby step 2 debt!!!
It honestly doesn’t even feel real.
I’m working on a few blog posts many of you have asked about now that we have become debt free, including
How we celebrated becoming debt free;
How we intend to change our budget now that we are debt free; and
What financial goals we’ll focus on in the New Year now that debt payments aren’t robbing us of our income. So stay tuned!!!
For more info on all the things we did to pay off our debt as fast as possible, sign up below for my Free Guide, full of tips and tricks.
And that’s a wrap! How about you?
How did your budget and/or debt repayment go in November?
Are you making progress on your 2019 financial goals? We have one months left—let’s finish the year strong together!!!
Do you have any questions about budgeting or paying off debt? Leave them in the comments below!
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