Last month, I shared our goal for 2014 – getting rid of the student loan by the end of the year. I explained why we wanted to do it and mentioned that I’d be doing monthly updates, so here I am sharing our progress for last month. Funny thing about monthly updates is that when things go well, monthly updates are fun and you’re just excited to share the news, but when it doesn’t go as planned or intended it isn’t nearly as enjoyable.
Guess which happened in January? Yeah…..*coughs* ..last month wasn’t so great.
When I mentioned the plan last month, I said that we’d need to throw a little more than $1,100/month at the student loan to get rid of it in time. Even then I knew that was a huge number and it meant making big changes. The numbers are in and this is what we did:
Hmm, seems like we missed a number (like the one in the front). To make this easier to track, I’m using Mint to review our transactions:
So basically a few problems and mini – emergencies added up to a chunk of money (the cats alone set us back around $300) being redirected. I’m hoping next month will be much less stressful.
We may be able to get some relief from our taxes (though not by much). We’ll have to wait until everything is filed to get a closer approximation, but right now we’re looking at getting a refund. Just off the top, though, a chunk of our refund will be directed towards finishing off our financial cushion. We had depleted it when we had to replace my husband’s car this summer so we want to get it back up in one swoop with the refund. With that out of the way, we hope to be able to tackle the student loan.
I shared my progress; I’d love to hear about yours – good or bad? Has 2014 started off well for your family?
Photo Credit: 401k