Back in November of 2012, I wrote about my $40,000 worth of student loan debt. This was the total amount of student loans that I accumulated while I was getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees. When I wrote that post, I had hardly paid anything towards my student loans. Interest was slowing building up, but not that much, as most of my loans were still being deferred.
Ever since that post was published, I have been attacking my student loans like crazy. I have been applying any extra money towards my student loans, and I am now proud to say that they are almost gone. We have enough money in the bank to completely pay them off, but have chosen to wait as we don't want to withdraw everything out of our emergency fund to pay my student loans off. We don't want to tap into retirement funds as well, so those funds will stay where they currently are.
As a refresher, I graduated in May of 2010 with my B.A. in Management and my B.S. in Business Administration. I applied for jobs and was hired on at a financial firm right after I graduated. I then took a year off from school and decided to go back for my Finance MBA. I then graduated in August of 2012 with my Finance MBA. I continued working full-time throughout this and still hold my same job today. I graduated with a decent amount of debt, but I am happy that I don't have more.
I am guilty of taking out more in student loans than I needed. Right after high school, I needed a place to live and I probably took out an extra $1,000 or $2,000 to help fund my living. So, not too horrible, but that's still an extra couple of thousand that I probably should not have taken out.
June is my student loan payoff month.
I am so close to being done with student loans forever. I am very grateful for everything that has happened in my life, and I do realize that when it comes to student loans, that I have been lucky with the fact that they will be gone so quickly. I have worked very hard though!
I started by working on my extra income. As you all know, my extra income has been through the roof lately. I'm glad that I am able to share my journey with my extra income with you all. I hope that I have been helpful with all of my posts. I never thought that my extra income would be anywhere near where it is today, and thankfully to it I am able to pay off my student loans much more quickly.
I also have been attacking my student loans according to interest rate. The loans with the highest interest rates are the ones that I have been eliminating first. It has been nice watching each student loan disappear!
What are you doing to eliminate your loans? How much do you pay each month towards them?
Did you take out more than you needed?
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I came out of undergrad with way more in loans than any person should have, because my family couldn't afford to pay for my education, but made "too much" money for significant assistance. I worked hard for scholarships and worked all through school, now my husband and I are chipping away at our combined school school debt and directing the extra in our budget to principal payments on the highest interest loans.
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I hope your loans are gone soon! 🙂
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I've never had to deal with student loan debt because I never went to college but like you I would work to pay it off as fast as possible. Nothings better than the feeling of not have another debt to burden your finances.
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Thanks Chris!
My recent post How I’m Getting Rid of My Student loans FAST – $200 Giveaway
i learned that most won't get that high paying job your degree gives you until you are in your 30's most likely
Interesting. Thanks!
My recent post How I’m Getting Rid of My Student loans FAST – $200 Giveaway
I'm working on paying off my student loans by attacking the highest interest loans first-like you! I did take out extra loan $$ and now it's coming back to bite me in the hiney, but we learn from our mistakes (I certainly have, at least) and am working on paying them off. I really like that the SALT site focuses on paying off student loans as well as life lessons in budgeting, etc… Thanks for the link, I'd never heard of it before!
Yes, we all definitely learn from our mistakes. Thanks for leaving a comment 🙂
My recent post How I’m Getting Rid of My Student loans FAST – $200 Giveaway
My parents (and very generous scholarships) paid for my college… We did pay off DH's loans by being crazy frugal the first year we were married and starting grad school in a new (expensive) city. Like, I lost my ability to digest red meat kind of frugal. (Income: 36K, rent for tiny apartment: 20K, student loans: 10K+, everything else including furniture, income taxes, deposit etc. <6K)
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That's awesome that you two were so frugal! We could definitely work on that.
My recent post How I’m Getting Rid of My Student loans FAST – $200 Giveaway
I come from a generation (a) that is in Europe and (b) when only a few went to university. So did most of today's politicians. So I can't begin to imagine what a worry it must be for you to graduate with tens of thousands of dollars debt but this has invaded us now as well as students in the UK are having to pay up to £9k a year fees plus living expenses of at least another £6k. So after a three year undergraduate degree, they will end up with about £50k debt. Our employment culture is not the same as in the US – although it is a lot more flexible than most of the rest of Europe. I think it is a terrible load and admire people who manage to pay it off so quickly. It may of course be that having such a debt round your neck concentrates the mind but I can think of better ways of encouraging that!
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To pay off my student loans, I paid way more than the minimum every month by paying any extra money I earned toward them, increasing how much I paid with each raise, and rolling the payment amount to the next loan as each one was paid off.
It is amazing how fast you can pay off debt when you really put your mind, and all your effort, towards it! Great job Michelle!
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I took out the minimums. But it still took me nearly 8 years to pay them off!
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Wow you moved fast on those loans! having a day job and making the extra income you were surely helped! As for me I plan on tackling that beast of student loans at the end of this year. I am looking to make as much extra income from side hustle to pay that debt down as well. For me I did take out more money they I actually needed. Who would have known, college student no job no credit check and you are will do give me XXX amount sure i'll take it. Just stupid but we all learn.
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I just signed up on SALT Money and I learned about how to "deconstruct" my paycheck in one of their articles. Definitely an interesting topic!
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Congrats on digging yourself out of those loans! I was lucky enough to graduate with very little student loan debt, but I have so many friends that struggle with it that I completely understand what it takes to pay it all down. Hope you have some plans for what to do with all that money you were using for the payments!
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The Understanding Insurance article on the SALT website (https://saltmoney.org/content/media/Article/understanding-insurance/_/R-101-2345) was super informative. Thanks so much for sharing it and congrats on paying off your student loans. We're really close to paying off hubby's.
Luckily I never had major debt but I did have debt (some student loan and minimal credit card debt). I eventually paid everything off just by being frugal and cutting back – I didn't know about "side hustles" then. 🙂 Now I am debt free and loving it.
The only loan I have left is our dang mortgage, so I'm working on paying it off by sending extra every month towards the principal 🙂 Not very clever/new, but you better believe it's working!
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As someone who wants a healthy relationship with my credit cards, I love the "Master Your Plastic" lesson. Not only do they have helpful articles, their lessons offer personalized approaches to help managed money and debt.
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The salt website has a lot of interesting information. I found this infographic https://saltmoney.org/content/media/Infographic/t… that compares student loan debt and compares it to major movie box office sales. As a movie lover, this hit home for me. Thank you for the giveaway!
I did not take out more than I needed for school but probably should have thought about how much it was actually going to be!
Great site, and important to get the SALT message out! When my husband and I married, we continued to live off of one income and used my salary to pay off our loans. It was an easy transition because we'd been used to living off our own salary anyways! Debt free in a few years and I'm so grateful.
Congrats on the fast loan payoff! We just paid off our rent house a couple of months ago and are saving up to pay our current house off faster or buy another rent house. It will feel so good to eventually be debt free!
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Congrats! I was a lucky one who came out with no debt, but am considering taking some on for grad school…
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I signed up!
I did have high tuition and now have high interest, but I definitely took out more than I needed. I worked full time through college, and while I didn't spend loan money on many frivolous items (that I can remember), I spent my salary on whatever I wanted. I should have saved part of my income to pay for school. I did do one decently smart thing to try to rectify the err of my ways. I took out the max in federal loans to pay off the Citi private loan with 10.5% interest. I was the first in my family to go to college, and my brother has been able to learn from my mistakes, fortunately! He also had parental help, which I didn't have.
Congratulations on seeing the end of your student loan payoff journey! I graduated with my BS in 1998 and a MS in 2004. Total students loans was about 24K. I have been paying more than the minimum but the balance was slowly decreasing. This past January I switched jobs and was able to contract with my previous employer on a part-time basis for the last 6 months in addition to my full-time job. I also worked 20-30 hours a week during tax season. Putting in all this extra time has allowed me to pay off the last $10,500 of my student loans on May 21 – just a few short days ago! Am excited to be able to utilize the money that was going to student loans to achieve additional financial goals!
I am paying the minimums on all but one of my loans with the highest interest rate, and putting everything extra a month I can towards that. Just seeing that one loan total fall has helped me immensely, at least mentally.
I definitely didn't take out more than I needed, and I actually returned some of my loans because I was able to live more cheaply than my school calculated I would. Right now the loans are in deferment, and I'm trying to figure out a strategy for paying them off without worrying too much about them. This is the first time I'll be in debt, and grad school loans are no joke!
I've taken the sacrifice now approach. I'm throwing an extra $1000 a month at my loans and still won't be paid off until 4 years 🙁
I don't have any student loan debt and am working hard to keep it that way. Saving as a high school student is not easy but I know that it will be worth it! Thanks so much for the give away!
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Wow Michelle you are my hero! I took out too much for my three degrees, over $100k. I'm working on paying off credit cards and my smallest school loan. I will put my info into saltmoney and see if that helps me. I like the design of the site.
I've been concentrating on snowflaking every penny I can to my debt. Budgeted $100 for groceries and spent $75? Great, that's $20 for debt. I do strongly regret having taken out loans to get a graduate degree in the humanities…
My loans are currently deferred until August. I will be paying about $300 per month when the deferment period is over.
I signed up for SALTmoney. I learned about the different types of health insurance options!
ajoy1332 at yahoo dot com
I recently doubled what I’m paying back on my loans. I realized just how much money I was earning for the bank by paying things off at the slower rate!