March 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $16,203.64 Paid

Welcome to my debt payoff update for March 2018! In these updates, I detail how much we paid, tell you about any extra income we received during the month, and finally tally where we stand.

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.

Let’s get to it!

Debt Payments

Here is a breakdown of all of our payments in March:

Navient 1-07 Direct Loan-Sub: $5,619.30
Navient 1-08 Direct Loan-Unsub: $8,897.26
FedLoan 1: $1.43
Navient 1-12 Direct Loan-Unsub: $132.09
Navient 1-10 Direct Loan-Unsub: $162.42
Mortgage: $1,368.26
FedLoan 2: $22.88

We completely paid off our lowest loan (1-07) and made a decent dent in the next one (1-08)!

Click 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

I mentioned in the last update that we decided to try zero-based budgeting. 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 an extra payment at that time.

By doing it this way, our extra payment includes not only the budgeted payment amount and extra income we receive but any money we didn’t spend in our budget categories, as well.

It’s going well overall, but we’re still working out the kinks in this new system. We’ve gone over budget in a few categories the past two months. I’m not sure if we’re just not budgeting enough for those categories or if we need to tighten up our spending. (Probably the latter, if I’m being honest with myself lol.)

Also, this month, we had a few unexpected expenses, such as my car breaking down, that decreased our extra payment a bit. When we go over budget in a category or have an unexpected expense arise, we take from the extra payment amount to balance the budget.

Extra Income

The extra payment this month consisted of the amount we budgeted for the extra payment along with any extra income earned or received in the month of March.

The extra income shown below was earned or received in March.

• Mr. TMG’s side job: $900
• Federal tax refund: $12,421.03
• Refund for vehicle registration in the state where Mr. TMG bought his car: $61.72

Related:

• How to Win at Money with Tax Refunds
• 21 Side Hustles You Can Start Today

Remaining Balances

Now for the moment of truth. Here are the remaining balances on all of our debts.

Grand Total: $610,321.36 remaining

Look at all that GREEN!!!

via GIPHY

Not sure yet how we’re going to tackle the next three loans after we pay off 1-08. They’re all about the same amount, and for some reason, the FedLoan one is decreasing, even though we’re only paying $1.43 on it a month.

On one hand, I want to pay that one off before FedLoan realizes they’ve made some kind of mistake. “Oops. Already paid it off. NO TAKE-BACKS!” 🙂

On the other, since it’s shrinking, we’re thinking about finishing off the rest of the Navient ones and circling back to that one.

If we go with the latter plan, we’d start with 1-10 because it has the 6.8% interest rate, then hit 1-12 at 5.41%, then kill the FedLoan one.

So crazy that we’re down to so few loans before we tackle the monster FedLoan (ya know, the one that’s bigger than our mortgage…yeah). We definitely plan to hit that before we think about paying any extra on the house.

I’m excited! We’ve still got a lonnnggggg way to go, but I’m very proud of how far we’ve come.

How did you do with your financial goals last month? Did you make the kind of progress you wanted to?