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My Student Loan Repayment Progress is Referenced and I’m Quoted in USA Today

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Hi everyone! If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you know that I accumulated a ton of student loan debt over the course of my higher education experience. You also know that I spent all of last year aggressively repaying one of my two student loans and that I now owe less than half of the amount that I started repaying in 2006.

If I can toot my own horn – my progress is pretty impressive by any measure.

Those of you who have been around JerseySmarts.com for an even longer period of time may remember when I was interviewed by USA Today back in 2006 about the enormity of my student loan debt (JerseySmarts.com Article | USAToday.com Article). Well, earlier this week – some five years after the good folks at USA Today plastered my mug on the front page of their newspaper (above the fold, thank you) – I had a follow up interview with the newspaper to give them an update on my student loan repayment progress.

USA Today Provided a Brief Update and Quote on My Student Loan Repayment Progress

Sandra Block – the personal finance guru at USA Today who wrote the original story back in 2006 – interviewed me this past Wednesday for about 20 minutes. It was really a lot of fun! Ms. Block is an excellent interviewer and she really allowed me to tell her the story of my last five years. In fact, she referenced my student loan repayment progress and even quoted me in an article that was published on USAToday.com yesterday. You can read the article (I’m referenced and discussed in Point 3) by clicking here.

I’m really pleased with the article and the few lines that are allotted to my story within it. As always, Ms. Block did a good job of cutting through my story’s fluff and boiling it down to an easily digestible “real story” for the readers to absorb. And I hope that the readers did absorb the reality of my experience and that my story helps them with their own repayment plan.

If anyone out there would ever like to talk about their student loans or discuss their repayment plans, you should always feel free to send me an e-mail. I’d be glad to share more about my experience and do my best to provide you with my reality-tested advice. Of course, you could also keep an eye on JerseySmarts.com because this is where I ply my writing trade, but you already know that, right?!

In short, I’m glad to be back in USA Today after five years of dedicated, hard work repaying my student loans. And I encourage you all to stay tuned. I’ve got about $51 thousand left outstanding and I’m getting ready to gear up on my repayment of that loan in the coming months.

The light at the end of the student loan repayment tunnel is becoming brighter, clearer, and more in focus after all! 🙂

These Debt Drops Are Good, But They Should Have Been Greater…

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Last month, I wrote about dropping my student loan debt from $53 thousand to $52 thousand and then this past week I wrote about dropping from $52 thousand to $51 thousand. And while those drops are good and bring me ever closer to breaking through that $50 thousand barrier, they should have been much greater. Unfortunately, my success in 2010 ultimately resulted in an inability to make greater student loan payments today.

And it’s simple, really – in fact, I already wrote about it on this blog. You’ll remember at the end of February when I wrote about the fact that I’m going to owe taxes this April 15th. Hey, it is what it is, you know? And while I’ve been able to reduce my total taxes owed by about two hundred bucks (I forgot that last year I opted to not receive a portion of my state refund because I figured that this was coming), I still owe a lot of money in taxes this year.

A few weeks ago I received a really nice check for teaching at the all-online college. It was the type of check that if I didn’t have this level of student loan debt, I would probably take half of it and put it away in a savings account and then use the other half to update my wardrobe and spend a weekend away on vacation somewhere. However, I have student loan debt so whenever I come into a financial windfall the first thing that goes through my mind is, “Oh wow! I can pay down a lot of student loan debt with this money!”

Some might consider that pathetic, but when you’re stifled with student loan debt you just want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

However, when I received that nice check for the online teaching, I couldn’t even be excited about it. Why? Well, I received that check and immediately knew that all of it would be wasted on the government because I owed just about as much as that check was worth in taxes this year. Let me tell you – that’s a shitty feeling. It’s a shitty feeling knowing that these several thousand dollars that I really should be using to pay down this student loan debt is going to, instead, be wasted on bullshit government programs or inconsiderate assholes who are milking the system (and don’t cry me a river about all of the people who need the government subsidies because I see the assholes who milk the system on a daily basis in the Neptune/Asbury Park/Eatontown area of Monmouth County).

It sucks.

So while these debt reductions have been good and I’m proud of reducing my student loan debt, I should be paying down even more than I can write about here. Unfortunately, the government has managed to get in the way.

And it really sucks.

Closing in on Another Student Loan Milestone – Slow and Steady

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Not much of an extended update today, but rather a quick note on my attempts to close in on another major milestone in my student loan repayment plan. As of today, my student loan debt is down to about $51 thousand – another thousand down since my last update! As I’ve written in the recent past, pending a few financial things going in my favor, I’m getting ready to ramp up my repayments again and hopefully put a significant dent in the remaining $51 thousand balance.

$51 thousand left...

But, as I’ve also written in the past, this aggressive repayment stuff is a bit of a bitch. I’m a pretty diligent person and I like to think that I go over my finances to the point where I’m an expert at personal cash flows. The fact that I spend about an hour each day looking at the same dollars and cents may help prove that fact… Yet, when I plan for an aggressive repayment strategy, it seems as though all of my financial knowledge has to be thrust to the wind for a short while.

For someone who might be termed as “financially anal,” you might imagine that I don’t like throwing anything to the wind!

Keep an eye on the blog in the next few days. I’m working on a few entries that should be uploaded soon. The past few weeks have been very busy for me professionally and personally, so bear with me and the lack of fluid updates. Hey – if I’m going to try to aggressively repay this student loan, I’m going to have to work myself like crazy. At least for a little while more…

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. After completely repaying over $61 thousand in student loans from the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank, I currently owe $51 thousand to the United States Department of Education’s Direct Loans program. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Entries That Never Made It: The Connection Between Student Loans and Housing Costs

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Just like yesterday, I thought that I’d bring you another entry that never made it to prime time on JerseySmarts.com. The entry below was prepared back in April 2010 and edited further in May 2010 – back when I was in the heyday of writing about my aggressive student loan repayment. The topic of this entry was the very real connection between student loans and housing costs. My driving point behind this entry was that the more new/recent graduates spend on their student loans, the less money they have to put into the housing market (either through rent or a mortgage), and thus the economy would suffer until something happened to alleviate the cost burden of student loans.

Anyway, I don’t have to write too much more about the topic because you have this half finished entry to read. Enjoy!

However, with this article, I decided to write something a little bit different – how my housing situation impacts my student loan repayment schedule.

On the surface, some people might not see the very real relationship between paying where I live and how that impacts my ability to repay my student loans. The truth, though, is that aside from my self-prescribed huge payments to the student loan companies each month, my next biggest expense is rent. Ever since I started renting in the Monmouth County area, I’ve been lucky enough to share the rent expenses with roommates. Since I’ve been able to share the rent costs, my monthly rent expense has ranged from $500 per month up to what it will be come this July – $893 per month. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not so bad.

Down to $84 thousand...

However, if I had to take a guess at how much money I’ve spent on rent since I began renting in the Monmouth County area, I’d estimate that I’ve spent about $80,000 on rent. That’s a lot of money, huh? In fact, now that I owe about $84,000 in student loans, you could see how there might be some connection there… But focusing on what I’ve already spent in rent isn’t worth the aggravation. That’s in the past and, frankly, I make a decent enough annual salary where I can afford to pay a good rent to live in a good place.

There was probably some potential in that entry, but it’s over now!