thebeginningoftheendofdebt-blog

[thebeginningoftheendofdebt-blog]

Monthly Expenses: September

Here are all of my “must pay” expenses for September! 

Rent: $925 (I live in a 4 bed/2 bath apartment with roommates)

ConEd: $53.88/person (Luckily it’s starting to go down now that the weather’s cooling off!)

Cable/Internet: $44/person (I keep trying to get my roommates to cancel the cable. Someday!)

Loan 1: $54.48

Loan 2: $73.55

Loan 3: $92.49

Loan 4: $117.10

MTA: $120 (Taken out of my paycheck pre-tax)

Gym: $0 (Covered by my employer)

Health/Dental/Vision Insurance: $0 (Covered by my employer) 

Phone: $0 (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

Spotify: $9.99 (Best money I spend all month)

Hulu: $11.99 (I mean, who doesn’t always need constant access to The Golden Girls?)

Netflix/HBO: $0 (Use the family’s account)

Sephora Play Box: $10.89 (I justify this because I travel a lot for work, and use all of these minis on my trips or for in my gym bag)

#moneydiaries #money diaries #budget #budgeting #getting out of debt #debtfree #money tracking #spending #finance #financial freedom

[thebeginningoftheendofdebt-blog]

The Beginning of the End (Of Debt)

I haven’t known a world without debt since I was in high school. The second I left for college, I’ve had this looming cloud of student loans hanging over me. 

And then I moved to New York City seven years ago. They say you should have at least $6000 saved up before you come here, and I definitely didn’t heed that warning. Back then, I was working an entry level publishing job, making $28,000 a year, and the credit card debt began to roll in. Not because I was irresponsible with my money -- I had no life outside of work -- but because the cost of living here is ridiculous.

And then I had medical bills. And dental bills. And the student loans were still there. After five years, I’d moved into the tech/start-up world and was making $42,000 at the time. But my credit cards were maxed out, I was paying the bare minimum on my student loans, and I would have a mild panic attack any time I looked at my bank statement.

In August of 2016, I had a complete meltdown. My bank account was literally at $0, I’d suddenly had a $6000 dental bill thrown at me, I wasn’t going to get paid for another week, and all of my cards were maxed out. I sat on my friend’s couch and cried for hours, not sure what to do. She made me dinner, sent me home in a cab, and the next day I called my parents. Now, I’m stubborn. I’m terrible at asking for help, even though I know they’d do whatever they could. But I had to swallow my pride and tell my mom I needed money for groceries that week. We talked for hours about what I could do to make even small improvements and to start to dig myself out of this hole.

It took a year and a half, forbearing my loans, and a lot of hard work and budgeting, but I managed to pay off that dental bill and get myself back on track. When my grandma passed, she left me money to pay off my credit card bills, which I did and then promptly closed all of those accounts. I dog sat for a number of people, and put every extra penny I had toward my debt. I also got promoted during that time, so that helped speed up the process. On November 13th, 2017, the only debt I had left were my student loans. 

Fast forward to August 2018. I’ve built up a small savings of $2500 in case of an emergency (I NEVER want to be caught off-guard like that again), and I’m aggressively paying off my loans. I’m going with the snowball method, paying off the smallest loan and once that’s paid off, adding that amount to the next loan, and so on. I’m setting an aggressive goal to pay off every last penny of my student loans by December 31st, 2019. It’s a long shot -- I’ve got ~23.2k to go. But I want to see how close I can get. Or if I can do it. There’s a studio apartment and a dog on the horizon, and while I could do it now, I’d have to continue paying the minimum on my loans for probably another seven years. And I’m honestly sick of looking at it. 

So! Here we are. At the beginning of the end. I’ll be posting regular updates, budgets, money diaries, and all sorts of things here. Any tips or tricks you’ve found that work, let me know -- I’ll take all the help I can get!

See you on the other side,

S.

#moneydiaries #money #debt #studentloans #financialfreedom #nomoredebt #loans #getting out of debt #money diaries #student loans