6K down, 44 to go!

Finally! My big chunky payment went through yesterday and this is what greeted me at the Sallie Mae home page! Whoopeee!
I have to pause to celebrate the small achievements so I can keep the momentum on these loans going.

February 2012 Loan Payment

I paid a huge chunk on my student loan in January but it has yet to be debited from my account. I put almost all of my work bonus on my undergraduate, Sallie Mae loan that came out to 4 day pay off of $5904. However, because I wanted to get it OUT OF MY LIFE, I hurried through and accidentally mistyped my account number and now the loan is past due! AND I did the same thing on my other two loans. Sheesh. I’ve been psychotically monitoring both of them and realized that neither of the payments went through. Fortunately I called Sallie Mae and they told me late payments do not get reported until they are 45 days past due and I’m well under that. Hopefully both my Sallie Mae and Federal payments will get deducted ASAP this week. I don’t feel like any progress has been made because my checking account is artificially full right now with money that’s been earmarked for this mega payoff.

Since I’m using the snowball method to pay off my loans, this is what the grand plan looks like (I didn’t put the Sallie Mae loan in here since it will be knocked off this month):

My next goal is this stupid $953 as well as a good chunk of Fed Subsidized but I can’t see it separately on myedaccount page as it’s been consolidated and rolled into another loan. While my usual monthly snowball will be $1500, I’m adding $400 of my entire allowance as well as an extra $300 for the month of February, for a grand total of $2200. That is a huge sum of money and it HURTS to not be saving it or using it on something more fun like a VACATION but I have to stay focused and remember how great it’ll feel to see those ugly balances climb down.

I’ve scheduled the following payments so far, from the total of $2200:

- $245.12 to come out of my checking on 1/24 hopefully

- $500 to come out of my savings on 2/3

Fingers crossed that they will go through! I hate being late on payments especially when I have the money to pay the bills!

That leaves $1454.88 to be paid in February. I will probably schedule the rest as I see how my paycheck comes in. Right now I have it set up for $500 to come into our savings account and the rest to go into the checking. This makes it a bit complicated as I’m trying not to have to change the direct deposit settings but that means I have to schedule payments from different accounts, and at different times of the month as I get paid.

I hate debt

And hubby and I are in a lot of it. Fortunately, we also have stable jobs and the ability to pay it off. I’m impatient though and I’d like to be gone tomorrow. This blog is my attempt to keep myself on task as I try to pay off my student loans (totaling 44K) by the middle-end of 2013. Hubby has another 50K+ of student loans which we won’t start paying till Summer 2013. He’s still in grad school you see.

I’m sacrificing adding money to our savings account in the meantime as well as the personal allowance I receive (we each get a personal allowance every month). It’s going to be tough, because I live in NYC (most expensive city EVER) and I love to shop. However, I’m going to try and shop only at mega super duper sales, only buy quality items I truly need and love, or shop at salvation army. This comes at a good time actually because I’d like to kick my shopping habit. I hate being one of those people who “shop” as a past time and totally fall for all kinds of consumerist traps.

I’ve also listed the extra room in our apartment on Airbnb.com in hopes of generating some extra income. The room is listed for $65/night and if we can get someone to stay in it 10 nights out of the month, that’s approx. $600 extra in our pockets (I think there’s an Airbnb fee).