I’m laughing at myself now when I see that I thought I could save an extra $4,500 in cash by the end of the year. That would have been about $750 each month, starting in July. It has been four months of saving now, and I am almost at $1,000 of extra savings! At the very least, this exercise has made me more aware of how much money I actually have that is not budgeted for.

Extra Cash Flow - $257

Total extra cash saved since July: $968

In October my “extra savings” increased by $257. At the end of September, I was out $300 in reimburseable expenses from work, so essentially I had a $300 extra inflow in October that should have been attributed to September.

However, to offset this extra inflow, I managed to accidentally pay my student loan off by an extra $340! The student loan system switched websites this month, and I tried to make my usual extra payment as soon as I could log in. However, the system kept giving me an error message on the last step. I gave up, and logged back in the next week to complete the payment. THEN two payments show up on my account a few days later. Luckily I had the extra cash, and I’m fine with paying extra, otherwise I’d have been pretty upset!

A couple of other factors - I got a raise this month! One October paycheck was at my old salary, and one was at the new salary. Next month, both paychecks will be higher! I also expected to have a car repair bill this month, instead, I will have the repair bill (about $250) this week, so it will hit the November cash flow instead.

I also paid out $175 in giveaway prizes in October, so a $257 positive inflow is great!

Student Loan - Balance $12,199

The only benefit I’ve seen from the new student loan website so far is that they let me select which loan I’d like to apply my payment to, so that I don’t have to email them every time to get them to apply it to the balance with the higher interest rate.

My loan is close to being at a psychologically important number of $12,000. Right now I put $525 toward the loan each month (roughly $500 reduction in principle each month). I put $500 towards my Roth IRA and some mutual funds that are not in a retirement account. I could, over the next 12 months, take that $500 and put it to my student loan instead, and the loan will be gone by this time next year.

I will miss out on the dollar cost averaging of buying stocks each month - especially during this recession, when I expect over my lifetime, these stocks will show major gains as the economy recovers.

My student loan interest rate is roughly 6.5%. Any opinions on which choice I should go with?

Prosper Account - Balance $700

I have a small amount invested with Prosper.com. I started buying in January, and so far everything I’ve invested in is up to date on payments.

Another alternative to investing in stocks is to switch all my investing to Prosper for awhile. It’s likely I’ll want to buy a house in the next 5 years, so I’ve considered buying into a bunch of Prosper loans over the next year, and then collecting the payments and using them for a down payment in 5 years time. I don’t have a good feel for how risky these loans are though, even if I buy only AA rated loans.

Another point I need to decide is what to do with payments received. I have $75 in cash in my Prosper account now, from repayments - so far I have just used the repayments to purchase more loans, but at some point I should withdraw these, right? And do what with them?

Net Worth - about $13,000

I don’t pay much attention to my net worth, since the decrease in my investment accounts each month (despite the addition of $500 to them each month, the total balance keeps dropping.) However, this month my total investment account increased by 15% from the prior month! Not only did my new contribution retain it’s value, but I also saw some market gains! The balance has still not recovered to July levels though, but maybe one day…

Blog Results and November Goals

Stay tuned for an update on Blog traffic and income for October, and my November goals.