February 2024: Balancing Travel with Debt Repayment

Main goals

Keep paying down those loans, baby!

Major developments

This is the first time I ever felt like I could see the end in sight. Almost doubled our net worth just by doing the regular things - investing in our retirement accounts up to company match, then putting most of our savings towards debt repayment.

As usual, I kept rerunning the numbers every pay day, trying to estimate when we'll finish repaying our only debt, student loans. Mine are due to be finished this year, while my partner's is by 2027 latest with just the minimums. It's probably going to be earlier than that if we keep up this trajectory, but it's looking closer and closer!

We're lightly toying with the idea of being homeowners after we pay off our student loans. That's 3+ years away, but after renting my whole life, I am drawn towards home ownership in emotional terms - having a place to call my own. However, I also read all these stories about crazy maintenance work and am also considering owning a condo or an apartment to avoid those. Well, it's a good chunk of time to think it over!

I am also grateful we are able to save for travel and trips with our dear friends while paying over the minimum for all our loans and squirreling away a small amount to build our basic emergency fund. All in all, pretty happy with how February turned out!

The numbers