Student Loans 301: Fun Facts about Repaying Loans

When you start to repay your loans, I have one suggestion. Sign up for automatic payments. You can never forget and your lender will give you a quarter of a percentage off your interest rate. It may not seem like a lot, I save about $100 over the first year of my loans, but it can add up. $100 is a fifth of my monthly payment. I'll take that and add it right back into my payments, kthanksbye.

Which brings me to another point. You can ALWAYS pay extra towards your loans at any time without penalty. This goes for federal or private loans. By law, your extra payment first pays off any outstanding interest on the loan. If there is any remaining balance of your payment it goes directly towards the principal of your loan. Moreso, it goes towards the balance under the highest interest rate. If you have multiple loans in a grouping with the same interest rate, it'll go to the highest balance. 

So let's get personal. When I graduated from graduate school in 2011, I had $51,958.00 in student loan debt. That's not counting my outstanding accrued interest on unsubsidized loans. When loans came due in September I wanted to weep. My monthly payments were, and still are, $630.85. That payment? It's more than my rent. Over the nearly three years I've been paying on my loans, my principal is down to $43,500.93. I've paid $4,490.60 in interest, which is over 50% of the principal I've paid down. 

But that's just me, I have my better half and his loans to top it off. Last year we spent his paychecks, as a doctoral candidate he earns a stipend, on paying off his unsubsidized loans that weren't currently due but had the highest interest rate.

This upcoming year, I tend to think of years in school years, Ryan's paycheck goes to my loans. We're trying to strategically attack our loans and mine just happen to have the next highest interest rates that are accruing interest. Happy that we've paid off those unsubsidized loans collecting interest, we just applied his last check to one of my loans. Can I just say how exciting that is? It may not seem like a lot, but when you layer on an extra payment to your monthly payment, your principal takes a nose dive! I love it! 

How are your student loans? Do you have any? Does it feel like there's ever an end?