It’s that time of the month where we make our personal finances public! We report everything we earned, spent, and paid toward debt during the past month. Did February go fast or what?! I guess it is 10% shorter than January, so it’s not just me!
Debt Repayment
During February, we put $1,999 toward our student loans. For $.07 more, we could have made it a nice round $2,000, but I didn’t realize that until I started typing up this report since it’s split between a beginning and end of the month payment.
It’s nice to see the number for “Debt Remaining” finally be in the 70s! The 6-month goal that we set for ourselves for the Frugal Fresh Start Challenge was to get our remaining debt down to $65,000 by the first week in July. We still have quite a ways to go, but we’re always up for a challenge.
We are still baffled by some of our loan totals. We have a spreadsheet where we track the payoff total of each loan each month because the student loan servicer site is worthless. You’d think that they would make it easy to see your totals, but it’s not. Also, you can’t see any history, like how much interest you accrued in the past month, so we keep track of it ourselves. It has paid off in the past, because we have found obvious errors and reported them. A weird thing this month, is that some of the totals for the loans we aren’t currently paying on went down a little. When we calculate our “debt remaining” we use all of the current payoff amounts, so this also contributed to the decrease.
Income
Our total net income for February was $4,692. Since we live on last month’s income, this is income that we haven’t touched yet. We will budget and spend it in March.
Regular Income– $2972 This is Mr. SixFiguresUnder’s current take-home pay. For more details on his income, see here or here.
Blog Income– $1,383 This is the income I actually received this month (minus my blogging expenses), which means I earned it a month or two ago (payments always lag a month or two).
Etsy Income– $337 My Etsy shop was just about as busy as I can handle right now, so even though it was below my normal average, I’m fine with that! I may be putting my shop on vacation again soon so I can get ready for our new baby.
Spending
Each month we budget down to zero using last month’s income. Our spending in February comes from the income we earned in January. In addition to the debt payment above, here’s how we spent money in February:
Tithing– $406 At the beginning of February, we paid a 10% tithe on the money we earned in January. You can read all about why we pay tithing even though we’re in debt.
Other Giving– $20 Other charitable donations we made.
Mortgage/Rent– $0 We don’t pay any rent living in my in-laws unfinished basement, but we still keep this category here so that you know we aren’t leaving anything out. Our alternative living arrangement not only frees up money in the budget to put toward debt, but it provides a constant reminder of our goal to get this debt paid off as fast as possible.
Utilities– $0 We try to keep our usage low even though we don’t pay for utilities. We do pay for extra internet bandwidth, but it comes out as a blogging expense.
Republic Wireless Cell Phones– $27 We both have smartphones through Republic Wireless (you can read my review here). With tax, each phone (with unlimited talk, text and WiFi data) is around $11. They let you change your plan twice in a month, so when we went on our road trip (more on that in a minute), I upgraded to the $25 plan so I could get 3G data on the road. Then, I switched back to the $10 plan after our trip. The days on the $25 plan were prorated, so instead of being $11 for the month, my phone was $16 for February, which is still such a bargain!
Health Insurance– $156 We have an ACA health insurance plan. We had a private, high deductible plan back when those were allowed. You can read about how the ACA chanaged that.
Car Insurance– $97 We have auto insurance through USAA for our two older vehicles (both 1997) with a $250 deductible.
Renters Insurance– $14 We also have our renters insurance through USAA. It doesn’t cost much and it’s really great to have when you need it.
Food– $237 I set our food budget lower than our normal $300 because I knew we would be out of town for a week. I purchased all the food and snacks for our trip back in January, so I didn’t have to budget for that. We did get some pizza and chicken nuggets on our trip, which is included in our food total. Other than that, we had a grocery trip to Winco, Sam’s Club, and a couple mid-month stops at Grocery Outlet when I was in town.
Gas– $483 Our gas this month included a road trip. We drove 19 hours to visit family for my niece’s 8th birthday and baptism. Thankfully our trip was near the beginning of the month, before gas prices had gone up to what they are now ($2.89 is currently the lowest I’ve seen here). We did have one unfortunate incident that inflated our gas spending. While the gas was pumping, I ran into the bathroom (seriously the first time I have ever left the pump). My husband was in the car on a work call while the kids slept. The auto shut-off on the gas pump didn’t work, so when I came out the van was in a big puddle of gas. Fortunately a bystander came and stopped it. It could have been a lot worse. Learn from my mistake and don’t leave the pump!
Fun– $36 About half of this was to get fabric to make poodle skirts for my daughter and me for a sock hop that we went to. The other half was getting some things for our road trip. It’s amazing the entertainment value a new box of crayons, a clean coloring book and drawing pad have!
Household– $80 We got two new toner cartridges for our home printer (I’m not quite sure why my husband got two). We also got a couple other odds and ends throughout the month.
Gifts/Baby– $100 Last month, I was contacted by DealAction.com to try out their cash back program to possibly add to my roundup of best cash back sites and apps. They offered me $100 to spend to try out their site. When I was deciding if I wanted to accept the offer, I was excited to find that at the Children’s Place and Walmart (and others) the cash back percentage is higher than at the other sites I use! I took advantage of this by getting a couple of baby shower gifts for friends who have babies on the way, as well as some practical things for our baby, new socks for our kids, and a few other things for them to grow into.
Clothing– $50 Half of this was a dry cleaning. The other half was a visit to my favorite thrift store that’s an hour away. We got quite a haul for $25, including a pair of dress shoes for my husband, a winter coat for one of the boys next year, and lots of other great kids clothes for super cheap.
Medical– $210 Just some co-pays.
Car Repair– $103 We got a new car battery for my husband’s car. It was getting kind of ridiculous how often we had to jump it!
Law Practice– $44 We pay personally for my husband’s law practice management software subscription.
Lawyer Marketing– $25 It was my husband’s turn to pay for breakfast at a meeting.
How did your finances go in February? How are you doing on your 6-month goal?
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That is a very interesting post. Student loans are, fortunately, an alien thing for me as I am from Germany. Loans in general are not a such a big topic in Europe as credit cards are much harder to get. Any way, I was trying to find out in what area you live. As some of the costs are so low. We live in the greater Boston area and some prices around hear don’t even come close to yours unfortunately.
Have you checked out Mr Money Mustache?
My husband and I are just starting down the debt repayment road. Darn student loans! I find posts like yours so motivational! Keep up the good work!
Here’s our February Financial Freedom Update.
Elise @ Harvey Ever After
That halfway mark must seem tantalizingly close now! Congratulations!
I absolutely love tuning into your blog to see your momentum! I appreciate the time you take to write your posts about saving. I am in a similar boat with student loans; I graduated PA school with ~165,000 in loans alone, and I didn’t even take the full amount allowed with financial aid. Although this amount seems overwhelming at times, reading your posts inspires me! I am paying about 150% of the minimum payment, and I am already seeing a “dent” over the past few months. Student loans are REAL, and we need to educate ourselves about the impact on our financial health!
You are doing so awesome, I’m so happy for you! We took out a 3 year loan to buy a new car and have increase our minimum payment so we can pay it off in just 2 years. Thanks for the inspiration. 🙂
Getting it paid off early is the way to go!
Amazing! Your momentum helped me sit down with my husband to figure out where we are in terms of our student loans. We are in our last year as undergrads and have amassed a grand total of $140k, between both of us. We graduate in two months (thank goodness). We made our first loan payment in February, nothing to shake a stick at, but it is a start. We have a pretty solid plan for our first year post graduation, and then once we get orders for our permanent party we will be able to plan for a few more years.
Congratulations on reaching the almost half way mark!
That’s awesome that you made your first payment and you haven’t even graduated yet!! 🙂
hi stephanie! do you automatically take out 25% of your blog and etsy earnings for taxes? or is your income still low enough that it doesn’t matter right now? great job on your gazelle intensity, it’s pretty inspiring!!
So far I haven’t taken any taxes out ahead of time. In the past, the taxes on my Etsy income has just diminished the amount of our return, so we haven’t had to come up with the money out of pocket. 2014 was the first year that I earned an income with my blog. We haven’t quite finished doing our taxes this year (there is a complication with the first time home buyer credit that we got in 2008), but it looks like we will about break even. We might do things differently this next year, but we haven’t quite figured it out yet.
That’s great! I hope that the loan servicer didn’t make a mistake this time and that your totals stay lower next month. The road trip sounds like fun, actually; I’ve done really long drives like that (with an overnight stop in the middle) and enjoy them. There’s something soothing about it, although I have to say, I might change my mind if I had three kids with me 🙂
Yes! Me too! Of loan servicer is so cryptic, it is impossible to tell what is going on.
We generally enjoy road trips too. Our kids were incredibly good this time too, which made it really nice. 🙂
Well done! We felt like February was a good month but then also wondered if it was just because it was 3 days shorter! I’m impressed with you blog & etsy income, especially with the 3 kiddos.
Thanks Mark! It will be interesting to see how throwing a fourth kiddo into the mix will change things!
I love your blog. A lot. My family is on the other side of the picture–we’re about to head into a second bachelor’s degree combined with a master’s program for my husband, so we’re going to be taking on a lot of debt over the next few years! It’s really scary! Your blog has given me so much hope that we can minimize our debt and take control of it after graduation. How exciting that you’re getting a new little arrival!
Carolyn, that is great that you are being careful about the debt you are taking on. I wish we had faced ours a little more proactively instead of just looking at it as something inevitable. Going in with your eyes open will be such a big help!
First of all, congratulations on your progress! It’s so inspiring to see your monthly updates. My six month goal is right on track! I set my February goal pretty high and actually exceeded it! The loan that I paid off in February was the highest interest rate one that I had so it’s such a relief to see it disappear. Now, my goal for March is even more ambitious!
We did our taxes in February, and we came out about even (we owed a few hundred dollars, but that’s not much really) so that was nice to get out of the way. I had an unexpected medical bill, but enough money just hanging around to be able to pay it without worrying about where the money would come from. So, it’s a good time around here in relation to finances!
That’s great that you’re right on track Amy! And how cool that you exceeded your February goal!
We did amazing. Between tax return and husbands re-enlistment bonus we are almost at our six month goal and it only the beginning of March! I payed all this months bills, payed off a $5,000 personal loan to move our dogs overseas, 3 credit cards, 1 student loan, 6 months car insurance, put 3,000 away for us to travel with my husband when he takes a class in Germany for a month this summer, paying tithing on two paychecks and his bonus, payed extra on everything else. We had so much left over I just started plopping money into categories we even spent $1000 on rugs but you can’t buy them in the US for a cheap as we got them here. So his next paycheck we can hopefully put fully towards April!
Wowee Megan! That is awesome! You are making huge progress! Keep it up!
You’re doing great! Such an inspiration. Thank you.
Thanks Pam!
Great work! Your debt payoff momentum is so inspiring. Also, I have a long road trip coming up in four months so I have a question for you on your road trip, do you guys stop the night or power through? If so did you camp or find a cheap motel? And if you found a cheap motel where did you find the deal?
Thanks Judi! I have a post coming up on how we save money on road trips, so stay tuned for that one! 🙂
As far as nights go, we have done it all. This time it was 19 hours each way, but we had friends that live at a good stopping point so we stayed with them (on the way back we stayed with family who live at another good stopping point). In the summer, we usually camp where it’s free. Sometimes we go until we can’t go anymore and get a cheap motel. In that case, we don’t plan ahead and make reservations, we just fly be the seat of our pants and hope to find somewhere. We’ve also stopped at a rest stop or parking lot and slept in the car!