Thursday, June 30, 2011

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

Hello all! Work has finally quieted down and I'm on my way to a week long vacation tomorrow to celebrate a wedding and the anniversary of my own wedding. Can you believe it's been a year already? I can't!

But first, time to update the student loan numbers! I am getting excited to see the numbers slide down closer to the five figure mark. I predict I will owe under $100k in student loans by February 2014. Yay! Maybe I'll do something crazy to celebrate at that point like go back to school (boo!) or have a baby (yikes!).

As of today, I owe $118,180 for my fabulous education, over $800 less than last month.

Here are the details:




Hope you all have a fabulous 4th of July Weekend celebrating America: where anyone can get a higher education. :-)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I'm Never Leaving My Job!

Mark my words Internet, I am here to stay. Today I got my annual pension statement and it's just awesome.

I've been a public employee for almost five years but I didn't officially join the retirement system until April, 2007. I am currently in the process of buying back the service credit from the period in which I wasn't a member. I will be done paying that off in a couple of months. This means in April of next year I will be vested in my pension since it will have been five years since I joined but I will have 5.6 years of service credit.

Vesting in HUGE since, in the five short years since I've been a public employee, the state has created one new tier and is about to create another one with a lot less benefits than the tier I am eligible to vest in. Two major things the new tiers won't have that I currently have are the ability to retire at 55 without penalty and the fact that after ten years I will no longer have to make any contributions to my pension.

Thus, I get out so much more than I put in. Here are some numbers:

As of April 1 of this year my pension contributions total $5,999.95. Assuming I make the same salary for the next six years I will have contributed about $14,000 to my pension. Then I stop contributing but keep working for at least ten more years. How much do I get?

Using a final average salary of $49,312, when I am 57 years old I will have 30 years of service credit. I will thus be eligible for a Single Life Allowance of $29,587 a year. That's 60% of my final average salary. All for contributing just $14,000! This is totally morbid but even if I only collect for one year I am getting 2x my money back! Note that I'll probably elect one of the Joint Allowances because I'm married and then it's a little less ($24,900).

Will I make it to thirty years of service? I don't know. I hope so. We're still child free so I assume I will work until my hypothetical kid is in college. Being that they're not born yet that's another 24 years or thereabout. Even if I only worked twenty years I am still eligible for a sizeable pension as well (just not sure how sizeable).

So....twenty six more years to go!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Net Worth May 2011

The market was really crappy this month. My 457 actually decreased $30 despite my contributions. I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me. Oh well. I guess I have more shares or something.


But at least my student loans also continue to decrease. And my DH's new job definitely increased our prospective networth so all in all it was an okay month.


My new net worth is -$103,579! Have I mentioned I CAN'T WAIT until I'm not in the negative six figures anymore? It's so close I can taste it! I'm not even the poorest person on Networth IQ in my age bracket anymore. There are 17 people poorer than me! NB: Most of them are also lawyers.

Here are the stats:




Cash: Not tracking as all our cash is joint right now.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $9,861. I have approximately $5859 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have approximately $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. but the statement only comes quarterly so who knows if that's gone up. This makes for a grand total of $16,720 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $119,009!

Credit Card: All of our debts are joint debts now so this number is misleading but they will all be paid off within 4-5 months now that we are working together.