Monday, November 10, 2014

Month in Review- October

October was month #8 in this debt elimination story and if you read my last post, The Bad Decision Train, you might think that it had been 8 YEARS. We hit a hard brick wall and neither of us where able to help the other one over the wall to get back on track. We were a bit irresponsible, but we have decided that November is a new month and we need to get ourselves back on track. 


We went a little over board on our spending splurges, but somehow managed to not over spend our total income for the month. Student loans and our savings suffered from our financial decisions, but we are happy to say that the credit card did NOT get used to cover costs, so there is our silver lining! 


Unexpected Costs: 
We got in a car accident this past month (we are both fine, the car is okay, and it wasn't our fault), but even with insurance it ends up costing a few dollars here and there. Our car is now labeled "Totaled," but I'll do a follow-up post on the car in the coming week.

Unexpected Income: 
We dog sat for our friends and stayed at their place for Columbus day weekend, Thanks Jason and Leslie :) The apartment went up on AirBnB, and we made an extra $290 this month.

October Splurges:
Nick and I celebrated our 4th Anniversary in October and treated ourselves to an amazing 5 course tasting menu dinner at Birch and Barley. We had always wanted to do their tasting menu, so we bit the bullet and enjoyed EVERY bite :) It was an added bonus to have a $100 gift certificate to use from a summer beer fest we worked. Volunteering has its perks!!

Fun Memory: 
Halloween is not Nick and my favorite celebratory day. We rarely dress-up and most likely won't go out, but this year we found a play to go to on Halloween. We got tickets through our membership with Fill-A-Seat, a yearly membership provides you tickets to shows in the DC area for free. We bought the membership at 45% off, and have used it for three shows, so far, so I definitely think it has already paid for itself.

So anyways, we went to the show and then stopped into our friends restaurant for a cocktail! Our friend is simply amazing and covered our bill- Thanks Gabby :)  and so for the price of tip and street parking we were out on Halloween and had a blast people watching :)

I don't seem to have any action photos for Halloween, so here are some pretty fall hike pictures!


Lessons Learned
We need to find a way to let off steam in the money arena before letting our impulses take over our decision making. Something for us to work on. 

Total Payment to Debt: $0.00
Yup... Well the positive side is that we didn't go into debt this month, and trust me when I looked at our expenses that was a miracle :) 

Current Debt: $173,746.44
Same as last month...

We started with a total of 35 Student Loans.  We are on to our 33rd Student Loan.

#33 is currently at  $1,737.79 with an interest rate of 11.5% .