My check-in for the first 3/4 of the year:
(I will repeat the goals I've completed for any new-comers as inspiration.)
- Pay off remaining $2000 from sectional purchase - Completed April 1st!
- Pay off remaining $1600 of DH's student loans - Completed February 1st!
- Save $1000 emergency fund - Completed!
- Increase retirement contributions for DH and myself - Decided to hold off on this and will revisit it next year
- Decrease my student loan of $12,000 by a couple thousand - Fully paid off (all $12k!) May 29th!
- Pay off $2000 for our November cruise - No longer happening due to cruise ship being delayed and COVID. Money is sitting in my travel savings.
- Save up enough money for the WDW portion of our November vacation - Also no longer happening due to cruise being cancelled. Money is sitting in my travel savings.
- Save an additional $1000 towards emergency fund (added this after I completed the first $1000) - Will be done by next month (November).
- Pay $500 extra towards our new to us Highlander - I've currently paid an extra $80. Will for sure add another $100 before the end of the year. Will hopefully meet my $500 goal.
I'm feeling pretty dang good about what we've accomplished in the first 9 months of this year. I mean we knocked out ~$15,600 of debt between 3 of my goals! I for sure thought I would never pay off the full $12k balance of my student loan, especially this year. We do still need to figure out how we want to pay for the new roof/gutters we need to put on our house (approx. $16k). I don't know if it's better to tie that payment in to our property taxes? Or try to find someone who will give us a green energy loan for the roof replacement? If anyone has any helpful input I'd appreciate it!
So after our original cruise/WDW plans for November got scrapped, DH and I talked about booking a WDW trip anyway but for the whole week vs. the 3 days we were going to do. We were actually about to book a great deal I found through Costco, but when I went to go book it the special pricing ended earlier than it was supposed too. (It went through a certain date and I knew that. I logged on at like 8 PM that night to book it and the price had already increased. So frustrating!) It hadn't gone up by much, but I was so irritated by it we didn't book it. The next day when I went back to look at it again the price had increased by another couple hundred dollars, so we never ended up booking it. But I'm now feeling that was kind of a blessing in disguise. We wanted to go (even with the limited options for our first ever trip) because of the low crowds, but I've read on here that the park wait times have been steadily increasing and with Florida opening up their restrictions even more I don't think we want to go anymore. So now we're back to the drawing board on what we want to do in November. I definitely do not want to have a "staycation" since I've been working from home since March and I'm tired of looking at my 4 walls.
Happy last day of September everyone! I hope everyone is doing well, both with their goals and personally!