Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

I took a mini break from blogging as I've been so busy with work and some side hustles as my friend J. Money over at Budgets Are Sexy calls them. Hopefully a few will pay off. I'll keep you posted. :-)

Also there's some family financial news in the works (no we're not having a baby!) that I will share when it becomes official. Cross your fingers for us.

But I couldn't not do my monthly student loan debt roundup as I so look forward to seeing the numbers go down every month. Right now my current student loan balance is $121,418.12 - the lowest it's ever been!





I'm also happy to report that Defaulted Student Loan's balance is now at less than what I borrowed - woot woot! That makes three loans out of six that I've actually beaten back the capitalized interest they don't seem to tell you too much about when you take out the loans. Hopefully the Private Undergrad Loan will hit this milestone this year as well.

Getting married meant I lost most of my interest deduction on our taxes (boo) so out of the thousands of bucks in interest I paid last year, I think I got to deduct $400.

Budget 1/20 - 2/2

I am ridiculously late posting this budget.

Luckily I saved some money from my last paycheck to help towards the $350 attorney registration fee I have to pay.

And saving for the wedding, something that doesn't seem to ever be done with, sigh. It's less than six months away now so I'm getting excited. Still lots of money to be saved (and then spent).

So here's where my money will be going this pay period:

Starting Balance = $1375

400 - Wedding Savings
350 - Attorney registration
174 - Credit card
95 - Perkins loan
55 - Law school loan
100 - Groceries
50 - Valentine's Day*
40 - Health co-pays
111 - Misc.

*I found a cool place to go for Valentine's Day with my fiance and prepaid my half of the cost.

I also filed my taxes last night! I should be getting a refund of about $600, but all of that will be going into the wedding savings.

Got My State Tax Refund!

I'm back from a week-long mini crisis with my husband-to-be's family and $141 richer due to the great State of New York depositing my tax refund. I had a very stressful week and I'm very glad to be back home and getting things back to normal.

Stress has followed me home, however, in the realm of still waiting on news about my employment, not having the time and motivation to move out of my apartment that I'm still paying an arm and a leg for, and wanting to plan just one tiny thing for the wedding without people telling me that I am "jumping the gun."

From what I have seen so far, long engagements are awesome finance-wise but they also suck!

I will post news of what I will be doing with my extra tax money as soon as I figure it out myself.

Woohoo, got my tax refund!

Thank you, Uncle Sam! My tax refund came yesterday, a full three days before it was scheduled to arrive in my bank account via direct deposit.

I decided that my highest priority right now is to knock out the last of my credit card debt so I sent $200 towards the balance, for a grand total of $300 I paid this month. I now have a very small balance remaining on the card and hope to knock the rest out this month.

Look for an update on my sidebars finally to acknowledge this goal as well as kicking out the rest of my Short Term Debt (Water, Friend C, Utilities).

In the meantime, Happy Tax Refunds to all you people lucky enough to get them this year!

$14k = $7k After Taxes?

So yesterday I sent my resume off to two different job openings. Both are interesting (if not ideal). In one I was asked to state my salary requirements. After considerable research and deliberation I asked for $57,000.

Today they emailed me! I mean, granted, they only wanted me to resend my resume because they couldn't open the file I sent (drat!) but it left me almost happy that they are actively trying to view my resume.

So I decided to investigate just how much more money this would mean if I were to obtain my stated salary requirement.

I currently make $43,260. So, if I were to make $57,000 this would be about $14,000 more. Correct?

No, not so much. I went to this website which allows you to see how much your take home pay will be after taxes and other withholdings. The answer? Approximately $1519 per pay period (about $300 more).

The site isn't perfect as I actually receive a couple bucks more than it says I should and that takes into account my pension and health insurance witholdings, but I don't know, factored into annual numbers, would my $14,000 increase in income amount to only $7000?

Sorta makes me want to hate taxes even though I know they fund important things, yadda yadda yadda. I guess I would get a bigger tax refund, however, since my student loan interest can be deducted from my income and get me back into the under $55k tax group.

Of course this is all speculative as I haven't even gotten an interview. An extra $600 bucks a month would be nice though. A girl can dream....