Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

Hi everyone and a Happy Royal Wedding day to you! Even though I live across the pond I still woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the festivities live (two hours earlier than I woke up on my own wedding day haha).

Since tomorrow is a Saturday and I will be celebrating some big news with my own handsome husband I decided to do my student loan debt roundup a day early. I'm happy to report that I am finally in the $110's!

Here are the numbers:




And stay tuned for some exciting news in the S.N. family!

Budget 1/19 - 2/01

Woo hoo, my paycheck is $16 higher than the even higher paycheck I got last time. Still not sure why they decided to reduce Social Security contributions when they probably need them most, but that's not for me to decide.

And....we booked a trip to Mexico! Mexico here I come, baby! We have a family member's destination wedding to attend, and I'm excited because I've never been South of the Border. To go, however, we need diligent budgeting. Luckily, with this paycheck I should be able to pay the balance of our must-pre-pay room for four nights. We got a suite for a great price! It even has a jacuzzi and was only $20 more a night than a smaller room.

So far we can only afford to go for four days but the airfare may make more sense for us to go for a whole week. Still, we have a few months to figure that all out. Here's my budget with Mexico on my mind:

Starting Balance = $1268

Perkins Loan - 200

Mexico - 630

Credit Card - 200

Health - 85

Misc. - 153

I've already paid $500 towards Mexico today, plus the credit card and the Perkins Loan. The challenge is to not exceed $153 in two weeks of miscellaneous spending. I think I can do it! It will be worth it when I'm on the beach. Also I have $25 in my wallet from last paycheck (hee hee).

Budget 7/07 - 7/20

Since I need this paycheck to last me until the second day of my honeymoon I figured it was wise to write up a budget so I don't forget anything in the midst of wedding planning.

BTW I should have realized what I was going to get when I googled "two brides" but this image refers to a semi-financial quandry I am in. :-)

My friend is also getting married and her shower and bachellorette party are this weekend. I have already RSVPd yes to both events, but due to a death in a third friend's family I no longer have a way to get to them - five hours away. So...I'm trying to figure out what to do...and how much it will cost. So here's my worst case scenario budget:

Starting Balance = $1337

Sallie Mae - 406

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Credit Card - 100

Sprint - 74

Health - 45

Shower gift - 60

Transportation and party misc. - 180

Wedding week & misc. - 212

Okay, so that's not too awful. Of course it doesn't take into account the vast amount of money we will spend during the week of the wedding but that is coming out of the separate wedding budget I've worked so hard on for the past year. Time to enjoy it!

Where it Went 6/23 - 7/06

Oh man, I NEED to write a budget post. With the wedding right around the corner I have to make sure everything is on track as today is my last payday of my single life.

Luckily just sorting through the last pay period's expenses it seems I didn't get too far off track - save for maybe giving my little sister a $200 graduation present (cash) but I'd have given her $2000 if I had it so there's no trying to talk sense into me after the fact.

So here's where my money went for the past two weeks, just for accountability purposes since I didn't bother to post a budget in the first place. :-(

Starting Balance = $1416

Wedding Savings - 500
Gift - 200
Credit Card - 150
Perkins Loan -93
Law School Loan - 80
Clothes - 60
Health - 40
Wedding Spending - 32
Misc. - 120

I got some clothes to wear on the honeymoon at Old Navy - yay for $5 t-shirts!

Where it Went 5/26 - 6/08

Wedding. Money. Life. Stress.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. How is everyone else doing?

I'm pretty good, especially knowing that even with the daily stressors of planning a wedding, that I will be married to the man I love soon....and then boarding a plane to Hawaii. Can't wait!

So here's where my money went for the past two weeks compared to the budget I set:



Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 150/200
Wedding Savings - 700/700
Wedding Makeup Deposit - 50/50
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Law School Loan - 80/80
Groceries - 75/0
Healthcare - 40/40
Misc. - 149/160
Clothes - 0/40




I got a dress I may wear to my rehearsal and one I will definitely wear on the honeymoon. Found a really great discount shop a few towns over. Resisted urge to spend more than the $40 in my wallet.



This weekend I have what I hope will be my last dress fitting and then my hair and makeup trial. It's really getting close!

Wedding Wednesday

Ann over at Affecting Change in Me posted a Wedding Wednesday post today and it was interesting for me to read and I figured maybe some of my readers (who aren't yet as sick as I am of wedding talk) would like to read it as well.

I don't have a nice organized list like she does, but here is a random stream of consciousness on all things wedding related today...

• I had my shower two weeks ago and I only have a few more Thank You cards to send out. I know as a guest I hate getting late thank yous so this will be finished this week. The shower was a blast and we got some really nice stuff. (Now where to put it?)


• My bachelorette party is this weekend!!! A few friends and I are meeting in the city and going to a bar and then a show. I'm very excited!


• We are sending out invitations ASAP. Hopefully they will be in the mail by Monday, which will be exactly two months before the wedding. We already sent Save the Dates a year back so most everyone knows when the wedding is, but we still have to do this, ugh.


• I have my first dress fitting next weekend. I am excited and nervous at the same time. I have not seen the dress since November!


• Next week my fiance and I are meeting with our photographer to do an Engagement Shoot. This should be a good time to get to know him better and be more comfortable posing for pictures on the wedding day - plus it's included in our package. I don't know what to wear!

That's about it for now. Well, not actually. I don't now if my future groom and I have a place to stay the night of the wedding, I haven't even looked at veils, figured out our centerpieces, our menu or our cake...but those are blog posts for another day!

Happy Wedding Wednesday to other brides out there in cyber land!

Budget 4/28 - 5/11

I am crossing my fingers that my wedding dress arrives in the next two weeks (oh please go back to that post and read some excellent troll comments!).

Ticker update alert - with today's contribution I believe we have just over $5000 left in the Wedding Savings account. We're just about on target with our wedding savings with under three months to go.

Personal training has been going well too, though I'll have to scale back my sessions to once a week instead of twice of week due to money and time constraints. A month of intense training gave me the foundation I needed to work out on my home and was, in my opinion, money well spent. It's tough to stay motivated every.single.day but with a lot of hard work, I have seen some results.

I am also anxiously awaiting the busy time at work to be finished - we all are - but right now it seems everything is in such a state of flux that there's no telling what will happen. My workload has doubled and while I am getting tons of hands-on experience, it's hard to juggle three projects at once. Last night I had a dream about my boss! (Not that kind of dream I swear, but he bought me mozzarella sticks....weird, right?)

Anyway, enough non sequitor, let's get to the budget!

Starting Balance = $1261

100 - Credit Card
500 - Wedding Savings
93 - Perkins Loan
80 - Law School Loan
100 - Groceries
90 - Health*
140 - Personal Training
157 - Misc

*I'm pretty frustrated with my insurance company. They never tell me I owe them anything at the appointment and then I get a phantom bill in the mail several weeks later (still directed to my old address even though I moved six months ago and have told them that). Anyway, today I sent a check for my $25 annual dental deductible and have another $20 to pay for labwork. I finally found my checkbook!

Where it Went 4/13 - 4/27

I was really bad and didn't even get around to posting a budget on the 13th for the past two weeks. But even still, I want to document how my money was spent just to stay accountable.

It's been pretty busy both at work and in wedding planning. My fiance and I got to take a quick trip out of town two weekends ago, which will probably be our last weekend truly alone before the wedding. It was fun. This past weekend I had my shower (yay for presents!) and the following weekends are chock full of many obligations to friends and family. The fun has just begun!

So here's a quick accounting of how I spent my last paycheck ($1261):

Credit Card - 160
Sallie Mae - 406
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Sprint - 74
Healthcare - 85
Office Work Party tickets - 60
Misc. - 160

Stay tuned for more budgeting!

Budget 3/17 - 3/30

In the next two weeks I will be hoping to find my Pot of Gold! And I will...in that March is a 3 Paycheck Month and I should be coming into at least $500 in additional cash from an outside job that I am doing next week. Maybe even my state tax return will show up!

So here's my budget for the next two weeks. My paycheck has been "reduced" by $14 since I upped my 457 contribution to 8%. I'm sure I'll be thanking myself for that in 30 years.

I spent some time online getting my cell phone bill reduced since there was a random charge on it that I did not authorize. Success! Got my money back!

Interesting tidbit about today - it is the one year anniversary of my interview for my current job. Amazing how time flies! And there is exactly 4 months until our wedding!

Starting Balance = $1261

Credit Card - 165

Sprint - 76

Healthcare - 105

Groceries - 75

Gift - 40

Wedding Savings - 1170*

Misc. - 130

*Includes $500 in expected additional money.

Have to go out of town (again) next weekend for a family event. Here's hoping I can keep my costs down this time!

Where it Went 3/03 - 3/16

Hello there and a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's hoping my Irish blood will bring me some luck soon as I'm currently behind on my March Savings Madness by $32 and with New York State (and several others apparently) holding on to their refunds I may even get further behind before this month is out.

It has been a good couple of weeks in terms of personal development. I started working out more and eating healthier. This new development came with a higher grocery bill but I've been researching ways to eat healthy for less and hopefully will have some new tips to share soon. And the new Spring weather headed my way meant adding some new clothes in my still pretty basic wardrobe. So all in all, I'm slightly over budget.

Here are the numbers compared to the budget I set two weeks ago:

Budgeted/Actual
Credit Card - 120/120
Wedding Savings - 100/68
Groceries - 75/120
Sallie Mae - 407/407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Nice Collection Agency - 125/76*
Healthcare - 70/40**
Misc. - 118/195

*I don't know why this payment was lower. Maybe as I get closer to paying off that account (yay!) the payments get lower. I need to look into that because I would really like to free up that monthly line.

**I still didn't send in my annual dental deductible. I hate mailing bills and I am completely out of checks.

Miscellaneous spending includes a bus, train and subway tickets since I went into NYC for a while before visiting my fiance's family. There was some wedding spending but that came out of the Wedding Savings. I hope after this month we will be well on our way to paying for our wedding in cash!

Since today is Extra Paycheck Day (March is a 3 paycheck month) I'm hoping to catch up a little bit.

Financial Goals for 2010

I've been thinking a lot about planning our lives after the wedding and wanted to make a "Bucket List" of sorts. I've been adding to it in my head for days now...and it was getting a little intimidating. So, first, I thought I would list my immediate financial goals for 2010 - better late than never, right?

1. Get married without going into debt. There is a finite deadline on this goal - a hopefully beautiful Saturday in July and we're pretty confident we can pull it off with our combined savings.

2. Increase 457 Fund contributions. Check! After reading again and again that you should have one year's salary in your retirement funds by age 30 and feeling woefully inadequate at 30 years, 3 months and only around $10,000 saved, I bit the bullet and upped my contributions from 7 to 8%. It only means a $9 biweekly paycheck impact which I can handle.

3. Max out Roth IRA. After the wedding I will start funneling $400 a month towards this goal plus occasional snowflakes so that I can accomplish this goal by April 2011.

4. Buy back pension credits. As I've mentioned before, I have to buy eight months of credits into the pension system because I joined late. It's only going to be a couple hundred dollars and I will start this process right after the wedding as well. This way, I will be set to vest in my pension in August 2011.

5. Eliminate law school loan. This was one of my 2009 resolutions and I'm sad to say it hasn't happened yet, but now I've added the progress bar to the blog and have a plan to knock out the loan by November using some of the money currently going towards Wedding Savings (the rest is going to the Roth IRA).

In short, the rest of 2010 is going to be a great financial year for me. I'm going to marry a great guy, beef up my retirement savings, and start snowballing my student loan debt. Wish me luck!

Where it Went 2/17 - 3/02

I am happy to report that this past budgeting period was very successful. $100 in wedding spending on our Pre-Cana course and $500 in wedding savings, all the while being on target in every other category. As I've learned, if you transfer the savings out of your account immediately, you're pretty much forced to be on budget...because you have nothing left. Genius!

The Pre-Cana (marriage preparation) course went really well. It gave us a lot of food for thought in terms of planning our future together. Most of it was stuff we had already talked about but it was a good refresher nonetheless.

So here's how I did on the budget I set out two weeks ago:

Budgeted/Actual
Pre-Cana - 100/100

Groceries - 75/100

Wedding Savings - 500/500
Credit Card - 150/150

Sprint - 84/84

Law School Loan - 80/80

Perkins Loan - 93/93

Health - 65/40

Misc. - 163/160

We booked our flights to Hawaii for our honeymoon! Well, part of our flights at least. Now we have to make some decisions, save up some cash, and plan out the trip. I'm excited.

Stay tuned for my next budget - when I'm actually more awake and dressed. Right now I've been up for hours because I couldn't sleep.

March Savings Madness

Wow, it's March! Which means the wedding is only a little over 4 months away. Yowser! My fiance and I sat down and wrote out the remains of what we need to pay for and how we're doing in our current wedding savings and it's time to step it up.

Which brings me to the March Savings Madness.

In the month of March, I, Sallie's Niece, will save $2000 for the wedding.

You may be saying "but Sallie, you only get net $2400 a month and have $925 in monthly debt obligations, however will you accomplish this goal?"

Well, a few ways:

• I still haven't gotten my state tax refund, which brings me to a tax related conspiracy theory but I'll save that for another day. Assuming it comes this month that's $184 towards my goal.
• It's a three paycheck month! So I can divert almost $1000 of the "extra" paycheck towards the wedding savings.
• I got some extra work! Almost a year ago, I wrote about a court case I was assigned to, which sadly only netted me $50 at the time. Well it's finally ready to go to court so I get the remaining $500 of my statutory fee!
  

Plus my regular savings and a bit of belt tightening, I am confident I can reach this goal. Wish me luck everyone!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup!

Here it is, that time again to do a monthly roundup of my student loan debt.

February has flown by between Valentine's Day, work craziness, a weekend trip, and wedding planning. We are now just four and a half months away from saying "I do" which means lots of planning, decision-making and saving. I'll post more about our plans soon.

But in the meantime, here are the numbers. Freed myself of $741 student loan debt in this short month.

Budget 2/17 - 3/03

This weekend my fiance and I have pre-cana, or marriage preparation with the church. It's an all day course where we will discuss a lot of the tough issues married couples face, including finance. I'm pretty excited! But also, do you think the diocese will accept cash because I just realized I am completely out of checks?!

So here's my budget for the next two weeks, including the $100 course:

Starting Balance = $1310

Pre-Cana - 100
Groceries - 75

Wedding Savings - 500
Credit Card - 150

Sprint - 84

Law School Loan - 80*

Perkins Loan - 93

Health - 65

Misc. - 163

*I paid double the minimum payment this month because I loathe that student loan the most and want to evict it from my life ASAP.

Today also begins Lent and I have decided to abstain from beer and liquor, which maybe will help me spend less money as well. Guess I'll find out.

Saving For the Honeymoon

What's the one thing people wish they had more of, even moreso than money? Time. While I can't make more time (drats!) my fiance and I have been saving our vacation time for our honeymoon.

Last I wrote about it, we were still on the fence about possible destinations. As the wedding approaches, we are more convinced that Hawaii is the place to go! There are some great hotels we can stay at using rewards points and it's someplace I've always wanted to travel to. (My fiance has been to the Big Island while on an extended layover trip but he was all by himself.)

Airline miles are getting harder to come by (and save up) as my fiance hasn't had to travel for work in a while - a good thing - but we have enough to cover one roundtrip ticket.

And the most important thing, after paying for the trip, is how are we going to be able to get away from work for an extended period? That's where vacation time comes in.

With my fiance's recent promotion he gained an additional week's vacation! Which means he now has three weeks a year. We will need to use a day or two before the wedding to travel and get ready, save a couple of days for two weddings of our friends in the fall, as well as the Christmas holidays. That leaves about two weeks for the honeymoon!

As for me, since I've been with my employer for over three years (though in different offices) I just received an increase in my vacation accrual! As of January, I accrue 5.5 vacation hours every two weeks. Right now I have:

Vacation - 57.75 hours

Personal - 35 hours

Comp - 15.75 hours

Since it's the busy time of the year I can expect to accrue at least 20 more comp hours in the weeks to come. By July it looks like I will have over three weeks vacation saved up, not including personal or comp time.

Hawaii here we come!

Budget 2/03 - 2/16

I'm having one of those "why doesn't it grow on tree" days in regards to money.

Logged into my credit card account and realized I have been spending too much on new clothes lately, which is discouraging considering I don't consider myself even close to having a decent professional wardrobe. I need to lose twenty pounds or just wear a sack every day. Or both.

I'm just going to lay off the clothes shopping for a while and try to step it up at the gym.

And despite the feeling that all I have been doing for the past 5 months is pay bills and save for the wedding we are slightly behind in our savings.

So here is my budget for the next two weeks, taking into account the $495 federal tax refund I received:

Starting Balance = $1740

Wedding Savings - 500

Credit Card - 125

Sallie Mae - 407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Nice Collection Agency - 125

Groceries - 75

Sprint - 78*

Health Co-pays - 60

Misc. - 110

*Sprint is approximate since the bill isn't showing up yet but I took into account the $73 I usually pay plus a $5 donation to Haiti I made.

Our of miscellaneous I also want to buy a Valentine's Day gift for my fiance.

Bought my Wedding Dress!

After countless hours searching online, five trips to various bridal salons, two minor meltdowns, and dozens of dresses tried on, I have found THE DRESS.

A lot of brides start thinking about their wedding dress as soon as they get engaged (or even before!) but I was not one of them. This process was long, hard and frustrating. In the end I think I found a beautiful dress I am excited to wear on one of the happiest days of my life to come.

Note: it is not the dress I have included in this post as I don't even have a picture of it yet and I wouldn't want my fiance to see it even if I did. But trust me, it's gorgeous!

So how much did it cost? Under (amended) budget!

When I first was detailing our wedding budget I optimistically (and unrealisticly) estimated I would only need to spend about $500 on my dress (haha, falls down laughing on the floor). Sample sales, David's Bridal's $99 dress sales, used dresses, etc. were on my mind. However, as I learned, finding a dress in my size that wasn't poorly made or wouldn't require costly alterations was going to cost quite a bit more. Therefore, my fiance and I decided to up the budget to $1600.

The base price of my dress is $1100, plus planned alterations of $150 and taxes of $104, the total comes out to be $1354. This does not include other alterations, which have been capped at $300. Hopefully my alterations will not cost the full $300 but even if they did I would end up only slightly over budget. It does make me a little dizzy thinking I have to work a full two weeks just to pay for a dress that I will wear for one day, especially since my second choice dress only cost $550, but I decided it was worth it to have the dress that I loved.

I paid $600 down as a deposit so the store can order the dress, which I will have in (crosses fingers) four months. I can't wait to wear it!

Where it Went 11/11 - 11/24

Sorry for the lack of posts. I was dealing with an unexpected health problem that is now (mostly) resolved. And then work/life got in the way a bit. But of course, payday always reminds me to be accountable to myself, my readers and my budget.

It was a spendy two weeks in addition to the $50 in health care costs I incurred (2 $20 co-pays, $8 in prescriptions, and $3 on the bus to the doctor, and yes I realize that totals $51 but I like round numbers). Mailed out our Save the Dates for the wedding. Went out to the movies with friends once and the bar three times.

Another budget buster was our inability to grocery shop which means I purchased about 9 lunches in ten work days and more than a few slices of pizza. Bad S.N., very bad. After the holiday we will remedy that problem.

So here's where my money has gone over the past two weeks compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual

Wedding Savings - 220/40

Wedding Spending - 0/30

Sallie Mae - 407/407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260

Nice Collection Agency - 125/125

Sprint - 74/74

Groceries - 75/0

Healthcare - 0/50

Beauty - 0/20

Misc. - 119/180

I still haven't done any Christmas shopping, haven't found my wedding dress and need to be saving more for the wedding. To tell you the truth, I am pretty overwhelmed right now and I hope it gets better soon.

Budget 11/11 - 11/24

Time for a new budget! Need to catch up on my wedding savings a bit as December and January means we need to deplete most of the money we've saved so far paying installments to the photographer and band.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (at least for the next 8 months) but I can't wait until (saving for) the wedding is over! Soon enough I guess.

Without, further ado, here is my budget for the next two weeks. You'll notice it includes absolutely no Christmas shopping. I'm sort of in denial. :-0

Starting Balance = $1280

Wedding Savings - 220
Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Nice Collection Agency - 125
Sprint - 74
Groceries - 75
Misc. - 119

And that's how the cookie crumbles.

I should note that I thought my payments to "Nice Collection Agency" were almost done by now but a recent statement from them indicated otherwise. I need to figure out what the balance is so I can nip that payment in the bud and free up another $125 a month towards other goals.