Let’s Throw Some Money at Our Problems: December 2018 Monthly Check-In

If you’re joining us for the first time, we like to report a specific balance at the end of each month to have a public record of our efforts to pay down our debt or reach our savings goals. You can read about our decision to publicly keep track of our debt here.

Pull up those balances!

Nicole

I’ve paid off all my debts, so let’s see how I’m doing on my savings goals. Right now I’m putting $300 every month into savings (which represents 6 percent of $5,000, my average pretax income), another $300 into an individual brokerage account, and working to maintain a $3K checking account buffer.

I got a lot of paychecks this month, so my checking account ended up with a balance of $4,816.38 — which meant I put an additional $1,816.38 into savings. My savings account is still lower this month than it was last month, though, because I pulled from savings to max out my HSA and IRA accounts for the year.

November 2018 Savings Balance: $8,720.39
December 2018 Savings Balance: $7,811.19

November 2018 Brokerage Account Balance: $5,117.73
December 2018 Brokerage Account Balance: $5,031.66 (yeah, the market went down this month)

October 2018 Checking Balance: $1,582.33
November 2018 Checking Balance: $3,000.00

Mike

One last loan! And it’s serviced from everyone’s favorite institution, Navient. I don’t recall what the original balance on this loan is, but the minimum monthly payment is $266.70. I’m paying at least double, if not triple the minimum monthly payment in an effort to see this loan disappear faster.

November 2018 Balance: $20,654.18
December 2018 Balance: $20,252.71

Previously.

Photo credit: jesiehart, CC BY 2.0.

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