April was a great month! Ms. DINK and I traveled to Santa Fe/Albuquerque and Los Angeles for the first time, we stayed within budget for the first time in forever allowing us to crush a ton of student debt, and we hit a new net worth milestone – more than $600,000!

It feels great to be inching closer to the $1 million mark every day.

Student Debt

The second month of #OperationCrushStudentDebt went extremely well! We paid off $13,768 loans during April – saving us $70/month in interest! Combined with the payments made previously, we’re saving $120/month in interest going forward! Incredible.

I admit, we sort of cheated this month – only $3,150 of this payment came from new money. The rest was taking money that we had previously set aside for other purposes, in particular my law school tuition that is due in September (last payment EVER!). My rational was why not apply this money to my loans now – saving us money every month – and make up for it over the next few months. This will pressure me to save more and its low risk because we could always take out a new loan to cover the tuition should it come to that.

We are currently on track to pay off our loans in September 2019 by making $3,000/month payments on average, plus throwing all “extra” income at this such as tax refunds, bonuses, extra paychecks, etc.

Retirement Accounts:

The market gained back some of the ground it lost during Q1 of 2018 – putting our account values at the highest point they have ever been, thanks in large part to the $4,200/month in contributions made by us and my employer. No other big changes here.

Misc. Expenses

Dropped $370 on an emergency pet hospital visit and dropped $1500 on travel – due to our New Mexico trip and paying off the remaining portion of our October Jamaica trip. Memories are worth it, but man, this stings.