This is pretty amazing, huh? Here we are some eleven months after I began focusing all of my financial efforts on reducing my New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA) student loan and the penultimate payment was just processed. That’s right, folks. The most recent reduction in my NJHESAA loan dropped the total amount owed on this student loan from about $14 thousand down to about $10 thousand.
Down to $65 thousand overall
As of today, I’ve sold off all but one of my holdings from my stock portfolio. I’m still holding on to Sirius XM’s stock because I hate to sell thousands of shares of a stock that will only go up I think the stock will go up a few more pennies in the next week or so. And since I own so many shares, those pennies can translate into big dollars (hence the name “penny stocks”). However, at this point I’m all sold out of my Ford, Barnes & Noble, and other stocks.
It sort of sucks, actually. I spent two years building up a pretty powerful portfolio and here I am two years after my very first investment was made and it’s pretty much all gone. What’s more – it’s all gone in an effort to eliminate this NJHESAA student loan! So while I’m a little annoyed that my portfolio is all but eliminated in an almost-completed successful effort to repay a single student loan, I’m glad that the loan will be gone before the end of 2010 and that I can focus on rebuilding my savings and investment accounts in 2011.
Be on the lookout here at JerseySmarts.com. When that final payment is made in the next few weeks, there’s going to be a celebration!
In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $65 thousand, which breaks down to $10.8 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54.5 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.
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