June, July, and August 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $29,015.09 Paid

Hey peeps! Here’s a quick update on our debt payoff but first a brief look at what’s been going on in my life the last 3 months and why I’ve been MIA. To skip straight to the debt payoff update, click here.

I almost quit my job

My team at work has lost a lot of associates over the past year. As each one left, their work got redistributed among those of us who are still there.

At first, it was fine. I was billing more, but I felt like I could get all of the work done.

It got to the point, though, that I was billing nearly 200 hours a month and not getting everything done. To put things in perspective, our team has a rubric for how busy you are. You’re “moderate” if you’re billing 160 to 174. You’re “busy” if you’re billing 175 to 189. You’re “slammed” if you’re billing 190+.

I was consistently in the “busy” and “slammed” categories and still not getting everything done that needed to be done. I felt like I was working my butt off but doing trash work.

I was exhausted and felt overwhelmed. I even started casually looking for in-house counsel jobs but didn’t find anything I wanted to do. I really like what I do at my current job but just needed a more manageable workload. My job has always been fun for me, and I wasn’t having fun anymore.

I talked to one of the partners about my hours and about getting off of one of the higher volume clients I was working on with her. She agreed because we also had a more junior associate on the client who I had been supervising for nearly a year.

That change has made ALL the difference. I’m still billing around the same amount, but I’m more on top of things and am getting things done.

Baby #2 is on the way

Turns out my exhaustion wasn’t completely due to work. I’m pregnant again!

Little TMG is almost 2, so we had been trying for our second. We don’t know whether it’s a boy or girl yet, but we’re excited. Baby is due in March. Yay!

I’ve been much more tired this time around for some reason. I’m in my second trimester and feeling a little less tired than I did a few months ago, but hopefully, the fatigue will wear off completely soon.

Mr. TMG graduated from residency

It’s OVER. Praise the Lord!

I mentioned in this post that once he graduated from residency his salary would nearly quadruple.

He also got a nice signing bonus, which went directly to our loans.

His mortgage student loans are on the income-based plan, which kept the required monthly payment low because it was based only on his income as a resident. (We filed our taxes separately until last year so the payment would be based only on his income.)

Keeping the payment for his loans low allowed us to focus on my loans before the full payment for his kicks in.

That low payment also allowed interest to continue to accrue, so his loan balance is higher now than it was when we started. It was a trade off that we were willing to make, though.

Although his loan balance is about $25,000 higher due to the added interest, we’ve paid off about $122,000 in debt so far (not including interest).

We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we were paying his full monthly payment, which is likely to be upwards of $3,000 per month.

Paying off that much debt also lowered our total monthly minimum payments by over $1,000 each month.

The income payment plan restarts each year in November, so we have another few months before his monthly payment increases. However, we’re going to start aggressively paying on his loan as soon as mine is paid off, which should happen this month!

June, July, and August Debt Payoff Update

Update time!

I’ve mentioned before that I started this site to hold Mr. TMG and me accountable in our debt payoff journey. I also want to inspire and encourage others who are in debt (especially if you owe six figures like we do) by showing everyone that debt doesn’t have to be forever.

Whatever your numbers, I hope you find some inspiration in our story.

You can check out the links below to see previous debt payoff updates:

• 2017 Debt Payoff Update: How We Paid Off $47,029.45 in One Year
• January 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $8,029.40 Paid
• February 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $13,051.03 Paid
• March 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $16,203.64 Paid
• April 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $6,460.98 Paid
• May 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $4,445.36 Paid

I told you here that we’re generally following the debt snowball method, which has been working out really well for us. Mr. TMG got a second job for a while, which really helped accelerate our debt snowball.

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We also put any other extra or out-of-the-ordinary money, such as tax refunds, directly on our loans.

Updates

We’re still working our zero-based budget. With a zero-based budget, you budget every single dollar of your income in a given month. Your budgeted income minus your budgeted expenses should equal zero.

We balance our budget at the end of the month and make our extra debt payment at that time.

By doing it this way, our extra payment should include the budgeted payment amount, any extra income we receive, and any money we didn’t spend in our budget categories.

No big news on this front. We’ve settled into the zero-based budget and are basically pros at it now.

I mentioned here that we were planning a vacation this summer to celebrate Mr. TMG finishing his residency.

We took a cruise to the Bahamas with family, and it was worth every penny! (It was also a welcome retreat from the craziness that was going on at work at the time.)

We don’t have any other big planned expenses for a while. We’ll likely try to get furniture for the new baby during the Black Friday or after-Christmas sales, but we’ll see.

Until then, we’ll just keep plugging away at these loans. Wait til you see how much progress we’ve made!

Remaining Balances

When we set out to pay off our debt and realized we had over $670,000, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Nearly two years later, things feel so much different. I feel like we’re starting to gain control of this money thing.

Here’s where we stand as of the beginning of this month:

Grand Total: $578,092.85 remaining

We’re below $600,000!!!

You have no idea how good it feels to log into my student loan account and see 1 loan with a total balance of a little under $6,000 (now that we’ve made this month’s minimum payment). There used to be 14 different loans totaling over $104,000!

We should be able to knock out the remainder of my student loans this month. Then, we’ll be on to the big dogs for real. Gulp…

I’m ready!

What’s new in your life? How are you doing with your financial goals? Have you made the kind of progress you wanted to?