I've been checking at least twice a day since Saturday, so it seems like forever, but it was actually quite quick. The $675 I sent to NT's student loan this past weekend hit! $594 went to principal; not surprising so much interest had built up since my Feb. 1 payment is still in limbo somewhere.

Still, I'll take $594!

Also, AS's regular student loan payment to the same company hit, and $129 went to principal. I just noticed her total non-mortgage debt (which is just this one student loan now) is at $10,303. In three more months, it'll be under $10K!

That makes it $1469 down, $491 to go on the February debt goal.

That also takes our big-picture progress to $3501.89 for the year. The February goal is to get it to $4458, so we have $956.11 to go. I don't think we'll make it, but we'll come darn close, because ...

AS went and picked up one of her freelance checks yesterday; one had gone missing in the mail and the company cut a new one, and we deposited it right away. $900, and I sent a $900 payment to NT's student loan that very night!

That payment is pending in his account. Should hit tomorrow or Thursday, and since we just paid a bunch of interest, almost all of it will go to principal!

So, while we aren't going to hit our goal, I'm not too mad since we couldn't have known that $1100 would be stuck in the federal government all month. And who knows; maybe that will hit by Thursday and we'll make our February big-picture benchmark. (Yeah, right.)

Anyway, the thing about the big-picture goals is that it's all about meeting them in 4 years. If we fall behind one month we can always make it up later. And two things are making me very confident about making it up:

If AS's tax return goes through without a hitch, the government will give us $4000 to put us WAY ahead for the year.

And, as a result of changing our withholdings to try and avoid such a large refund next year, we'll probably have about $300 more per month. That's more than enough to cover my projected $264 monthly shortfall for meeting those goals! So if all goes well for the next four years, we could meet those goals without even breaking a sweat (or dipping into our fun money)!