July 2024: Another $10k Increase in Net Worth

Main goals

Still paying down the student loans here. It's been a real slog, but I can finally see the end! Across my optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic models, we're predicted to finish paying them off by early 2025 latest. I'm definitely excited to move on to the next goal, which will be trying to max out our retirement accounts.

Major developments

To be fair, working 2 jobs hasn't gotten any easier despite the feeling of relief at being $10k up in our net worth! If anything, working 7 days a week for 3 months has made me acutely aware of how much free time I used to have, and how recharging having weekends would be for my mental health. Since my second job is in the food industry, I definitely get more exercise and physical movement, but the constant fatigue is something I was not expecting. I've been sacrificing my me-time and hobbies just so I don't have to reduce my sleep hours. My SO and I are discussing cutting back to at least 1 free weekend, and see how we feel about it, especially now that the loans are almost done.

So, I ask myself again, is it worth it to have 2 jobs? To me, the answer is yes, as long as it's only for a finite amount of time. Or if they're both 20 hours a week and sum up to one full-time job. That's probably manageable. But for pulling 40+ hours weekly with no free day? It's very taxing, even for a person in their 20s.

I also noticed that I'm having less brainpower to use at my current job, and I wonder if that's a side effect of no downtime, or if that's just a sad correlation to how I feel about my job and working in general lol.

Another major development is the injunction that SAVE is going through right now. While I am pretty confused about the implications for the federal loans we have, I am still debating on whether to keep paying them down, or to save the payments in a High-Yield Savings Account (HYSA) and just pay them off once the courts have resolved what to do with SAVE. This is compounded by the fact that the loans are supposed to be in an interest-free forbearance, but the loan servicer keeps showing and projecting that we are having interest accrued daily on all the direct loans.

I made a sample payment just to see if it will actually go through and reduce the loans. If it does, I think we will keep paying because of the interest accrual. If not, then we'll just hold the money in a HYSA and do a one-time payment at the end of forbearance. So we shall see what happens this month!

The numbers