This update is 2 months late, but as they say, it’s better late than never!
Last year, I made a progress update on everything personal finance. I talked about my goals, paying off student loans, growing my stock portfolio and building my savings.
For my first year in personal finance, which started in August 2019, I had 3 main goals:
- Pay off Student Loans
- Invest More in my Stock Portfolio
- Grow Savings Accounts
Student Loans
In my last yearly update on September 2020, I was tackling my last Sallie Mae student loan. The balance had more than $6,000 and it took me 8 months to fully pay it off.
That really felt like a long time to pay off a very small amount, but my weekly payment was the only amount I could afford. But I’m grateful that I’ve said goodbye to Sallie Mae 2 months earlier than I thought.
I’m supposed to not add my progress in September and October since I started my journey in August. But since I’m late and I haven’t recorded the exact numbers for my student loans, I’ll include these two months.
Anyway, I moved on to tackling College Avenue, which at that time, had a balance of $2,800. I used to pay $15 every week to it, then moved to pay $140 every week.
When I moved my focus to College Avenue in my student loan update, it was estimated that I would pay it off around the middle of November.
I did my best to make sure I was consistent in my payments, and I was lucky enough to pay off College Avenue as well last September. That’s 2 months earlier again than I thought.
So now, I’m focused on paying off my federal student loans.
Great thing is we’re still in a payment pause, so I can really target my principal balance and pay less in interest. Once the payment pause ends, interest is going to accrue and it will make pay off slower.
The first federal loan I worked on was Group D, and it had a balance of $654. I made $165 weekly payments to it and fully paid it off just this October!
Now, I’m paying off my second federal student loan, Group B, which started with $1,777. I increased my weekly payments for this group to $180. And so far, I’ve only made one weekly payment last week.
Aside from Group B, I have two other federal loans, Groups A & C, which I will tackle next, and hopefully pay all off next year.
So in my 2020-2021 timeline, I’ve paid off:
- 2 Private Student Loans (Sallie Mae & College Avenue)
- 1 Federal Student Loan (EdFinancial Group D)
From around $20830, now my student loan balance is $10,509. I’ve paid around $10,321 to my student loans during that time. Compared to my first year in personal finance, I only paid around $6,570, so I paid $3,751 more this year.
Out of 8 student loans when I started, I have 3 left. And if I pay off Group B this year, it would mean that I paid off 4 student loans in 1 year!
Right now though, I’m not focused on adding any extra money to paying off my student loans. Instead, any extra will be put to my savings accounts.
Stock Portfolio
The main goal of growing this portfolio has always been to grow its dividends because I want to earn passive income.
Last year, from August 2019 to August 2020, my portfolio paid me $382.57 in dividends.
For this year, from start of September 2020 to end of August 2021, my portfolio paid me $386.54 in dividends. That’s an increase of $3.97!
And I know that is a very small and disappointing increase. But the main reason I found was because of January 2021.
Compared to last year, January this year saw dividends of only $50.54. That month was $16.95 less than last year’s. And the stock to blame for that was GNL.
If they hadn’t cut their dividends, I would’ve gotten a bigger or consistent amount for January.
But there’s no point in worrying about this because what matters is the bottom-line increased. If I continue to reinvest and contribute to my portfolio, the dividends will surely increase year after year, and my portfolio will grow in value.
Speaking of value, last year the portfolio value was around $5,434. Back then, I had TDAmeritrade and WeBull as my stock platforms. But I’ve decided to stick to one and move my other stocks to WeBull.
And at the end of August this year, my portfolio was valued at $7,388.24. That is a 35.96% growth which includes my reinvested dividends and monthly contributions. The market is bouncing back a little, and I’m seeing growth primarily in my REIT stocks.
My current positions are:
- ABBV at 3 shares
- ABR at 10 shares
- EPD at 20 shares
- GNL at 78 shares
- GOOD at 47 shares
- LFT at 25 shares
- MAIN at 7 shares
- NYCB at 16 shares
- O at 11 shares
- PCI at 20 shares
- SCHH at 2 shares
- STAG at 36 shares
- T at 30 shares
The plan is to keep adding more shares to these positions or maybe even a completely new one.
I’m still contributing $100 every month to my portfolio. I know it’s a very slow growth, but as long as I’m consistent, it will grow.
Savings
Building your savings is always a great idea. You’ll never know when you need money to cover emergency expenses. My emergency savings has been one of the goals I’ve been working on.
Last year, I had a savings amount of around $1,100, which back then was inside WealthFront.
Now, I have two high-yield savings accounts with Ally Bank and Yotta, with a combined amount of $4,732. It’s a big growth and you can blame the stimulus checks for that.
I’m happy that that is where my savings are at right now, but I have a goal to hit $6,000 before the year ends.
This is why I’ll be adding any extra funds to my savings instead of using them for my student loans. I’m going to make that happen in two months.
That’s my year 2 update for my personal finance journey. Guys, stick around and keep me accountable!