by Matt Fildes
This past week, I’ve done some thinking on what life after debt will be like once all my student loans are paid for. It’s actually something I think about quite often, well not really think per se, more like daydream. So this past week I started formulating plans of what I’m hoping to accomplish. I know a couple things I want to do for sure:
- Take a vacation. Not entirely sure where, yet, but I would love to do a 4 or 5 night stay at Universal Studios Orlando. I’m a big theme park guy and I haven’t been here in 15 or so years. From what I’m hearing about the new Harry Potter lands and all the money Universal is investing, the park is on par with Disney, or may even be better. I’m going under the assumption that for me and GF, it’s going to cost about $5,000, which I should be able to save up within a couple months of being debt free.
- I want to save up a larger emergency fund is a cash account. I just don’t know how much. Rule of thumb is 3-6 months of expenses. My expenses are quite low, so I’m looking at keeping $5,000 in this emergency fund. I have $2,000 right now, so having that extra $3K will definitely give me more piece of mind.
- I want to increase how much I put into paying off my mortgage. But I only want to do it by a slight margin. I’m paying $150 a week currently to make a monthly payment of $600. I’d like to increase my payments to $200 a week.
- I’m going to decrease my 401K contribution to the minimum (4%) to get the company match. I’ll use a fairly good portion of my after tax income to fund an investment account for a, hopefully, early retirement. I’d like to do between $300-$400 a week. This is a big one, since I want to save up a pretty large nest egg, but there’s a ton I feel like I’m putting off (like home renovations) that I could do with an extra $400 a month.
- I’ll definitely going to increase our fun having and my week allowance.
It seems like I have more plans than paycheck right now, so I’m going to really look at this and determine what my future priorities are. I’ve felt that I’ve wanted to early retire for a few years now, and that hasn’t changed. Thinking about it, I think retirement may be the wrong word to use here- I really just want to feel that I have options and choices- where, when, how much and if I want to work. Of course saying all this, I don’t have any children at the moment either. It’s easy to sit here and think of all these nice things to do being a non-married, childless adult. All this could change in an instant!
AS for my debt payments made in the last week, here it is:
| Loan Name | Interest Rate | Original Balance- May '09 | Current Balance | Total Paid Off | Paid Since Last Week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sallie Mae 01 | 5.25 | $27,837.24 | $23,719.92 | $4,117.32 | $57.03 |
| Sallie Mae 02 | 4.75 | $22,197.02 | $18,604.04 | $3,592.98 | $47.52 |
| Sallie Mae 03 | 7.75 | $20,692.10 | $0.00 | $20,692.10 | $0.00 |
| Sallie Mae 04 | 5.75 | $10,350.18 | $4,455.68 | $5,894.50 | $854.91 |
| Sallie Mae 05 | 5.25 | $6,096.03 | $0.00 | $6,096.03 | $0.00 |
| Sallie Mae 06 and 07 | 4.75 | $6,415.09 | $0.00 | $6,415.09 | $0.00 |
| Sallie Mae- DOE 01 | 5.25 | $5,000.00 | $0.00 | $5,000.00 | $0.00 |
| Sallie Mae- DOE 02 | 5.25 | $3,000.00 | $0.00 | $3,000.00 | $0.00 |
| AES | 6.8 | $9,000.00 | $0.00 | $9,000.00 | $0.00 |
| TOTALS | $110,587.66 | $46,779.64 | $63,808.02 | $959.46 |
