Monday, June 24, 2013

Student Loan Progress - June 2013

Another month, another round of student loan payments. Unfortunately this month ended up being a little strange in my student loan payments, due to circumstances beyond my control. I was not able to put as much money towards my loans as I was expecting. But first I'm going to start off with where I left off last month so you can get a frame of reference.

May 2013:

Loan  Loan Amount  Interest Rate
Private 1  $ 27,131.22 7.92%
Private 2  $ 20,037.32 7.92%
Private 3  $ -   7.92%
Private 4  $ 3,561.09 7.35%
Gov 1  $ 22,118.82 5.22%
Gov 2  $ 7,566.56 6.80%
Total  $ 80,415.01

Here's what my loans look like this month after my payments were made in June:

Loan  Loan Amount   Change  Interest Rate
Private 1  $ 26,053.92  $ (1,077.30) 7.92%
Private 2  $ 19,971.82  $ (65.50) 7.92%
Private 3  $ -    $ -   7.92%
Private 4  $ 3,532.69  $ (28.40) 7.35%
Gov 1  $ 22,118.82  $ 0   5.22%
Gov 2  $ 7,566.56  $ 0   6.80%
Total  $ 79,243.81  $ (1,171.20)

As you can see from the above, I have started to tackle Private Loan #1 as my next big target, but not quite as much as I would have liked to this month. I set up an auto-payment ahead of $1500 towards my three private loans ahead of time. This was because it was due when I was on vacation. I didn't want to put too much because I was unsure of what my expenses would look like this month. In hindsight, I definitely could have bumped it up this month but I guess I can do that next month instead.

You may have also noticed that I did not make any payments towards my government loans this month, which is one of the reasons things were beyond my control. That would have been another ~$400 or so, bringing me close to $2000 total for the month. Unfortunately it did not work out this way because for the 2nd time in a little under a year - my government loans have been sold to a different provider! Apparently nobody wants to take my money from me? They can really pay it off in full if that's what they want...

But I did receive an e-mail that my loans had been transferred to http://myfedloan.org/. Previously I had been using www.myedaccount.com, and I forgot the name of the one that my loans started out with. I received that e-mail on June 11th and they told me it can take up to 15 business (!!) days for my loan to transfer and show up. I'm going to hate to see how bad the interest on my loans look like once this is finished processing. After screwing up the payment last month, and now over a month of interest accruing it will not be pretty. Needless to say, I'm still waiting for the loans to show up. They were shown as fully paid on my previous account right away on the 11th, so not sure what the hold up is here. I also have no idea when this new payment will be due, but I'm hoping that it is later in the month like it was on the previous website.

The only advantage that I'm going to be enjoying is that this new loan service does provide a 0.25% interest rate discount if you set up an automatic debit. I plan on setting up automatic debit that is slightly higher than the minimum payment, as long as it does bring the principal down. If not I will configure my own "minimum" payment to do exactly that. This will be helpful as I continue to put the majority of my money towards my higher interest private loans.

Here's to hoping that next month brings more significant progress and less confusion!

2 comments:

  1. Paying your debt is a step by step that you have to religiously follow. You'll have difficulty in paying off your loans when you're skipping your payments or when you're spending the money on other things. I hope you'll fix your loans as soon as possible. I know you can be debt-free sooner. :)

    SunsetPayday.com

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    1. Thanks for the movivation :) I definitely plan on being debt free as soon as possible. Tracking my spending has helped so that I can put as much money into my loans as possible, instead of wasting it on other things that I don't really need right now!

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