I sent off a HUGE payment to NT's student loan, and it posted right away in his account! $1889 went to principal, so that means we've paid off $2701 so far this month, surpassing the $2500 goal!

(By the way, a few payments from last year STILL aren't showing up, so the online account doesn't match my records. I show a remaining balance of $18,772; they say he still owes $20,345. I'm keeping careful records and will continue to harass them a couple times a month until those payments post. I don't want $1573 worth of payments to just go down the drain!)

In a previous post, I talked about the personal finance book "All Your Worth." The authors recommend the 50/30/20 approach to budgeting (50% of income to needs, 30% to wants and 20% to savings or extra debt repay). I myself track how my budget breaks down into these categories, and mine is currently at 51.48% needs, 20.69% wants and 27.92% savings/extra debt repay. I think it's a good allocation for me but sometimes it occurs to me that I ought to get my needs under 50%.

I noticed in "All Your Worth" that they have you start with your income minus taxes (but including any pretax deductions such as medical premiums and 401(k), of course). Well, I actually count our tax withholdings in the "needs" category. So out of curiosity, I subtracted the taxes from our gross income and from our "needs" category, and recalculated our budget from there.

According to the "All Your Worth" style of calculation, our ratio actually comes out 42.7 needs/ 24.4 wants/ 32.9 savings/debt! Now that's much better! Later in the year our "needs" are going to eat up a larger portion when the second baby starts daycare, so it's nice to feel like we're well under 50% right now.

I definitely feel like given our large student loan debt, it makes sense to have our debt repayment skew the "savings/debt" category higher. And while we always could find ways to use more "wants" money (we're a family of spenders vs. savers, for sure), I already feel like we're very indulgent in that category, so I don't feel any need to up that amount at this point.

Sometimes it's hard to believe I struggled so hard and did so badly with money my whole adult life, until about 5 years ago. It really is doable to retrain yourself, and this way is SO much happier and less stressful for me!