About 'rising debt'|Risk of a default on Treasury debt rising by the hour
Student loans, for many, are an unfortunate result of pursuing a higher education. I am in my second set of student loans; I paid off the loans (about $25,000) from when I sought a Bachelor's Degree in English from Arcadia University (then Beaver College). Now I am in the processing of paying off another set of student loans, acquired when I sought (and earned) a Masters of Business Administration from Villanova University. I paid off my first set of loans by paying at least the minimum due every month. That sounds like an obvious strategy, but in conversation with some people, I've found that it isn't necessarily obvious to everyone. So, rule one: Pay off at least the minimum amount due on each loan, each and every month, so that you avoid late fees and interest rate increases. Many lenders also reduce your interest rate after a specific number of on-time payments, so it's even more critical to make sure you always have enough for the current payment and the following month as well. There's a part "B" to this rule: auto-draft your payments to the lender to help make sure you are never late. Bonus: many lenders give a small interest rate reduction for auto-draft payments. Rule two: Pay ahead only if you are sure you will be able to make your regular payment next month too. If you are on a budget - as many of us are - and you find yourself with enough extra money to pay next months' student loan payments.... Don't do it, particularly if your income fluctuates from month to month. Friends have complained to me that sometimes they have made a "double payment" and thought that doing so would mean they didn't have to pay next month. That is not the case; paying a month ahead doesn't alleviate your responsiblity to make another round of payments the following month. If you have enough for another month's payment, put it into savings, because if your income suddenly is reduced, this way you can get that payment in by using the money designated for it from savings, while requesting a loan deferment or forbearance, if needed. Rule three: When you happen to get extra money, perhaps as a gift, a tax refund, or any other source, don't rush out and spend that money on frivolities. Sure, it's nice to "treat" yourself sometimes, but consider that paying off your loans and getting out of debt sooner is another way to "treat" yourself. Take at least a good percentage of that found money and apply it to whichever student loan has the highest interest rate. If all the rates are equal between the loans you have, then apply it to the lowest balance loan. Rule four: Too many of us have learned to spend whatever money we earn. If you receive a raise, designate a portion of that to maintaining your standard of living, but also designate a portion of that raise towards paying down your debt, each and every month. One rule of thumb is to take any increase over and beyond the rising cost of living, and then divide the excess in half - half to improving your standard of living, and half towards paying down your debt. Consider this: if your pre-increase salary is $40,000, the consumer price index is 2% and you receive a 5% increase, then 1.5% of your increase, every month, could go to pay down your loans. Over the course of a year, in that scenario, you will have applied an extra $500 directly against the principal of your loan, further reducing the interest owed, from that one salary increase. If you receive a similar increase the second year, you can then apply $1,000 for the second year towards your loan principal (the same $500 designated from the prior year's increase and another $500 from the current year's increase). This is an extremely powerful way to pay down your debt fast, as long as you are comfortable with not increasing your standard of living for a few years. Rule five: If you aren't in a position to get a raise, then don't despair. Find some other way to make a few extra dollars each week. It might be babysitting, a part-time job for a few hours each weekend, or if you have a talent, such as crafting goods, snapping pictures or painting from still photos, then capitalize on that. Every dollar counts. Those were the rules I applied to my first set of student loans. I am working on my second set of student loans and have just begun the fourth year in the payment period, meaning I've just finished making 36 on-time payments. I've been rewarded with an interest rate reduction for on-time payments and have been paying extra where I can, usually between $50 to $75 a month extra. I started out three years ago with just over $42,000 in debt in student loan debt; in just three years, I have knocked off one-third of the balance so that I'm at about $28,000. If I hadn't been pushing to pay these loans off and only had been making scheduled payments, my balance would be closer to $39,000. So I am about $11,000 ahead in just three years. Was going into debt to gain a higher education worth it? In the case of obtaining my B.A. degree, definitely; there are too many employment opportunities that would have been closed off to me without that education (and the accompanying diploma). My adoptive parents had hoped for me to become, at best, a clerk-typist. I checked the average hourly wage for an experienced clerk-typist; in my area, a clerk-typist with over a decade of experience averaged less than $15/hour in 2010. By pursuing the bachelor program at Arcadia, I was earning that an hour - twenty years ago. It's a fair bet that having the Bachelor's Degree has allowed me to earn at least twice what I would have earned otherwise, each and every year. I don't regret having had those loans at all. Will the MBA will prove to be worth the time and money spent in the long run? I do know that one of the interviewers at my current employment told me - after I was hired - that having the ability to write well, rather than having the MBA, was the reason she had selected me. I am not making substantially more than before the MBA degree, but then, I could also argue that I have not fully leveraged the degree either: I did not apply to major financial institutions on Wall Street, where salaries have often been the highest for MBA's. Instead, I stayed in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania region and still continue to work within Information Technology. Still, having the MBA degree may open the door for opportunities higher up the corporate ladder eventually. Only time will tell. |
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