The first few months of this year I was concentrating mostly on building up an emergency fund, but since I've worked that into a comfortable cushion, I've put a lot of energy into paying down my loan the last couple of months instead. It added up! May alone I was able to pay $900 into my loan, and June was a little less spectacular with about $500, but I was quite pleased with both nonetheless. July I was aware I was going to have to pay the deposit on a new apartment soon (end of August it will be) so I only paid the automated $192 on my loan and set money aside for that instead.
By the strategic combination of coupons and sales I was able to get a ton of stuff free or under $1 the last few months: toilet paper, deodorant, toothpaste, razors, Luna bars, organic Ragu pasta sauce, Kraft Barbecue sauce, mustard, Hebrew National hot dogs, Pace salsa, spices, pineapple juice, Sabra hummus, Starbucks ice cream, rice, Wheat Thins, and other things I've lost track of... I was trying to find them all down in my receipts just now, but I don't really care about it enough to deal with all that paper. (haha! Score one, Sarah Eliza against Sarah Eliza's OCD tendencies...)
I'll be roommate-less beginning August and the rent in my new place will be more than 25% higher than what I'm paying currently, so my finances will have to be even tighter soon if I'm going to make any loan progress. At the end of this month I'm going to take a good hard look at my spending patterns and make any necessary adjustments. If nothing else, I can live off of rice
and pineapple juice for a while, right??I'm planning on heading into grad school in the spring (Master's of Teaching, here I come!) and the idea of more loans is a little daunting to say the least, but I know it's an investment I need to make. Plus, it'll be fun to go back to school, and I will be very glad to leave the life of "office drone" and "cubical zombie" behind me. I'm going to be the chalk-and-textbook-toting school-equivalent to Rosie the Riveter. New adventures await! And until then, I'll be wielding the tools of a Thriftie to get me closer to where I want to go, and keeping y'all posted on my progress and observations. ;)
Great job! Congrats on going back to school. With the economy in such bad shape, this is the best time to go!
ReplyDeleteWhoa! It's Presley from Emory. I'm impressed with your thriftiness. I'm sure you have some way of tracking all of this, but I use GnuCash, which is kind of a free version of Quicken, and I love it. I'm not as good as you though! I am bored and I want my boredom to be devastated so I'm going to keep reading, don't be surprised if you get like seven comments all from me ;).
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