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Progress on Feb. goals, but ...

February 28th, 2011 at 08:44 pm

I'm not sure I'm going to hit my debt-repayment target!

One of AS's student loan payments hit, putting $120 to principal. That's $900 down, $100 to go.

AS has one more student loan payment that is supposed to process today, but it may not update the amount until tomorrow morning. I'm still going to count it as Feb. progress if it hits tomorrow and shows up as a Feb. 28 payment. However, that one will only put $58-$60 toward principal.

The month got away from me and I didn't remember to make an extra student loan payment until Friday. I set up a $100 payment to one of NT's student loans that's not in repayment yet. The account shows that a payment is processing, so hopefully it'll have hit by tomorrow with a Feb. 28 date. However, it just occurred to me today that since that loan does accrue interest (which I pay quarterly), my payment may go to interest rather than principal. I looked all over the site and it didn't say what they do with extra payments when the loan's not in repayment yet.

So I'm afraid that even if both the above payments show up tomorrow with a Feb. 28 date, it won't be enough to principal to meet my goal. Also, it would be the first month since I started that I've paid off less than $1000!

I'm also not doing well on my creative project/book reading goal. I have over 100 pages left in the book I'm reading, and I didn't do any creative projects. I have tonight to either finish the book or do something creative. Maybe I can dash off a short story?? We'll have to see. Lil' AA is home with a fever, but she's actually lower-maintenance when she's sick, so it's a possibility.

We had a really spend-happy weekend. Lots of money going out in all directions. First, we rented a car because AA got invited to two birthday parties, and one of them was not accessible by bus. While we had the car, we went to Costco and loaded up on supplies. Then we finished off most of the birthday shopping for all four of us, and NT and I also bought ourselves some clothes. Oh, and we had two unplanned meals of carry-out vs. cooking.

Whew! I just have to remind myself that even though some was unplanned, we had the money in the budget. The rental-car costs came out of our travel fund, the gifts from the birthday fund, and the food and clothes we paid for with our regular weekly spending money. We blew our grocery budget and had to borrow from the 2nd half of March, but hopefully some of the staples that we now won't have to buy for a while (olive oil, veggie burgers, canned tomatoes, razors) will help us reduce our shopping bills for the next few months and make it even out overall.

Costco was really annoying. I'd forgotten to bring my card, and it took forever to find my info in the system. Then, they wouldn't take Visa (???) and I don't carry my American Express card (in fact, I never use that account and have been meaning to close it, but I guess now I'll keep it), so NT had to get money out of their ATM (fees on both ends, of course). Then they check your receipt when you try to leave, like they think you might be trying to pull something over on them. Still, some of the deals are pretty great. Only time will tell if we saved ourselves money in the long run, though.

We have a busy busy month of March planned, but I hope to blog more than I have in recent months. I've been keeping up on everyone else's but I like posting my own entries more often. Just a matter of carving out that time; I used to always have time at work, but I need to get used to blogging from home since I'm usually too busy at work.

2 Responses to “Progress on Feb. goals, but ...”

  1. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1298953220

    I think Costco only accepts Amex for credit cards.

  2. ceejay74 Says:
    1298992032

    Yep frugaltexan, that's what they told me. I told them I never carry my Amex card because more places accept Visa than American Express, and the lady looked at me like I was crazy. But it's true--I've been to several places that don't take Amex, but I've NEVER been anywhere that took credit cards and didn't take Visa.

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