November 2018 Debt Payoff Update: $10,399.17 Paid

by | Dec 7, 2018

Welcome to my debt payoff update for November 2018! In these updates, I detail our progress on our debt payments for the month and highlight any updates in our financial situation.

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 November:

Mortgage: $1,120.05
FedLoan: $9,279.12

Take that, med school loan. Woot woot!

Check out our previous debt payoff updates below to see our journey:

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

Related: 21 Side Hustles You Can Start Today

We put any other extra or out-of-the-ordinary money, such as tax refunds, directly on our loans. (Check out the updates from February and March 2018, where we got thousands of dollars back on our tax refund and put the money straight on our debt.)

All of these steps have helped us get to where we are today!

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 and extra income we receive, along with any money we didn’t spend in our budget categories. We’ve settled into our budget and are doing great with it.

Thanksgiving went well. We definitely stayed within budget. Mr. TMG had a great idea to spread out our shopping over the month, so each week’s grocery bill was just slightly higher, rather than having a monster one at the end of the month.

Now we’re gearing up for Christmas. Mr. TMG and I stopped giving one another gifts years ago, as we’ve increasingly come to dislike the commercialization of the holiday season. Last year, we started what we hope will be a long family tradition of spending our money on experiences and making memories, rather than stuff, for the holidays.

Nevertheless, we’ll give in to getting gifts and/or contributing for holiday parties at work and Little TMG’s daycare. We’ll also get Little TMG a little something. 🙂

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.

I know I’ve said it before, but finally seeing this med school loan decreasing is EVERYTHING! I’m sure the newness will wear off eventually, but until then…

via GIPHY

Here’s where we stand currently:

Grand Total: $557,342.52 remaining

Wooooooooo!!!! Look at that FedLoan balance coming down. We’re almost back to the balance we started at. Slow and steady wins the race.

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

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