pay back my student loans

one of my loans is on a 25 year payback. This was totally an accident and I want to change it to standard + extra cash and be done with my loans, but SM makes it nearly impossible for those of us who don’t write paper checks to prepay. What a racket. They pissed me off with the “I’m sorry we can’t just set a monthly amount (over the standard) to deduct”.

I suspect the hassle will prove to be a great incentive to be done with Sallie Mae.

This day seemed really far off a year ago and then it slipped by unnoticed early this month(due to auto debit, which is great—no missed payments). Although my plans for repayment have slowed a bit some, we have decided to up our saving rate to to the increasing job market instability as a precaution,I look forward to being school loan free soon!

And now that interest rates are dropping I have an extra incentive to pay them down because my loans will soon have a higher rate than my savings. Hope to be at 10k this time next year!

Actually it’s not so bad clicking the pay now button once a month and watching that chunk leave my checking. Although I am stretching out my payment schedule from 2 years to 4, in order to save more cash for other things, I will have managed to knock off $5k from my student loan bill this year. For some reason I feel great pride paying the government back every month

I have a lot of it to offer to an employer with two degrees and nearly a PhD. Thankfully my loans are only from my undergrad.

I like to think of my loans/ education as the equivalent to that New Honda Civic I always wanted, but never bought. That’s about what I owe. Sure the Civic would get me around and be an improvement on the 10+ year old car I managed with in Grad school, but Hondas lose 46% of their value in 5 years. Maybe I could have chosen a path that pays better, Maybe I should have worked even more my first 2 years of college…maybe a lot of things. Priceless or worthless to others my education is priceless to me and I’m grateful that the federal government offers some support to students even if it is mostly in the form of loans.

Being thankful for and proud of the education I earned makes that ‘Honda Civic’ loan payment a LOT easier to mail each month.

For others: look for refinancing options if you are struggling with payments.

And after all that I come out with a degree that’s kind of useless… should’ve taken all that tuition money and invested it instead! Or should have started a small business!