October 2019 Monthly Debt Update

Welcome to my October 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

My husband and I are currently in baby step 2. 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 the goal is to become debt free by December 2019.

In addition to my standard monthly payment of $375.63, I make an additional payment to my student loan each payday (I get paid twice a month).

My extra payments this month totaled $0. Hahah! This should be a short blog post!

We Paused The Debt Snowball in October

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, then you know that we made a decision to pause our debt snowball for the month of October.

This was the first time in our entire almost-3-year-long journey where we paused the debt snowball and didn’t send a single extra penny to debt. It was a tough pill to swallow, particularly being so close to the finish line (as of October we were 93% done), and knowing we’d have to drag it out a little bit longer. It made me very sad to go an entire month without sending anything extra to debt, but we knew we needed to do it, and it was the correct financial decision.

So, why did we pause the snowball?

In case you missed it, my sister’s car flooded in Tropical Storm Imelda, which slammed into the Gulf Coast in September. The car was actually my Mom’s car, which Mom let my sister drive. The insurance company totaled her car, and gave her $1,000 to replace it (after Mom paid off the loan on it). I knew my sister wouldn’t be able to handle replacing her car without getting a loan—and we are anti-loan around here, in case you hadn’t noticed. I wanted to help her pay cash for a replacement vehicle, so she wouldn’t have to get a loan. She’s 21, going to school full time, and waitressing part time. She’s never had debt in her life, and I wasn’t about to let her start now, if I could help it.

RELATED: 5 Financial Lessons Learned from Tropical Storm Imelda: A Must-Read if You Own a Car

Then, my car started making funky noises. Turns out, I needed major repairs—$1,300 worth. While I save regularly in a sinking fund for car repairs—it didn’t have $1,300 in it!

For those reasons, we paused the debt snowball.

We cash-flowed the repairs to my car and donated $2,000 to my sister’s cause to help her buy a new car.

So, the debt didn’t really decrease much at all in October. We made our standard payment of $375.63, and that’s it.

As of November 1, 2019, our total debt was $7,237.

Total Debt Update

I began my debt free journey in January 2017 with $104,901 in student loan debt. I started this month (October 2019) with a student loan balance of $7,578.66. As of November 1, 2019, the balance is $7,237.84.

With this month’s debt payments, I have paid off $97,663.16 of my student loan debt. I’m 93% of the way to freedom!!!!! Can’t wait to get back to paying off debt in full force in November!!

For more info on all the things we have done to pay off $97K worth of debt, 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 October?

• Are you making progress on your 2019 financial goals? We have two months left—and that’s plenty of time to make progress!!

• Do you have any questions about budgeting or paying off debt? Leave them in the comments below!

• Don’t forget to pin this article so your friends can see, too! Just click the image below!