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The End Is Drawing Near… For My Student Loan Debt, That Is!

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Did you read the last entry that I wrote about my student loan repayment? If not, then I encourage you to take a minute of your time and check it out. In that update I noted that my outstanding balance had fallen from $17 thousand all the way down into the four-digit range of $9 thousand. And now I’m back again with another update and another relatively sizable drop in my total student loan debt burden.

Only $7 thousand left

As of today my student loan debt sits at about $7 thousand. Most folks are going to read that update and think, “It’s all over for Joe now – there’s nothing left. He’ll pay this $7 thousand off in a month or two and be done with those loans for good.” Well, if you have that thought in your head, then you happen to be correct. And while I obviously have the cash sitting in one of my savings accounts to eliminate the balance of my student loans today, I’ve opted not to fully repay the debt… yet!

The reason for this decision is that I need to do a better job preparing this blog to showcase the journey that I had to take to get from about $121 thousand in student loan debt all the way down to $0 in a matter of a little under 7 years. Not to toot my own horn, but I believe that in the pages upon pages of student loan updates that I’ve provided over the years there are a lot of great tips and pointers for people struggling with seemingly insurmountable levels of debt. If you’ve been reading these updates for a while, then you’ll remember that I used to constantly remind everyone that my accelerated payment was possible even though I do my best to meet or exceed donating 7% to 10% of my gross income each year to charity. Also, in some of my early student loan entries I was big on reminding folks that not only was I paying off my student loans at an accelerated pace, but I was also paying for all of my own expenses without any help from any government institutions or individuals. In addition, I mentioned in more than one of these updates that I was able to do all of this while working for a nonprofit organization – not some big, investment bank that was dominating Wall Street or a hedge fund that was kicking off a 7 or 8 figure salary. Nothing along those lines is going on here. And I think I even may have written in some of these updates that I’ve even managed to continue my education over the last seven years by completing a Graduate Certificate program and enrolling in a Post-Master’s Certificate program.

The quick lesson from all of this? Don’t believe that an incredible amount of student loan debt will automatically stifle your ability to earn money and make significant repayments! Remember, YOU are the one in control of your life and decisions – and that includes your financial life and decisions.

As I’ve been telling people who I am close with that I’m on the verge of completely repaying my student loans, they’ve been asking me how such an accomplishment is possible given the circumstances noted above. Well, I think a variety of the answers to the “How?” question are found within my past updates and I’m working on finalizing a separate page on the blog to catalog those answers.

But stay tuned, everyone. Once that separate page is created I fully intend on repaying the balance of this student loan and kissing the whole thing goodbye forever. The end is drawing near for these student loans…

On May 14, 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a master’s degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. In July 2006 I made my first payment on these student loans and, so far, I’ve repaid a total of $114 thousand in principal. My lenders include the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, the USED’s subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, and CitiBank. The USED sold my student loan to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) on April 16, 2012. I currently owe about $7 thousand in principal to MOHELA. To date, I’ve repaid over $35 thousand in interest to these lenders. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Student Loan Balance Just About Sliced in Half – We’re Into Four Digits Now

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Only a few days ago I posted an update about my deliberation on whether or not I should eliminate my student loan debt once and for all or play it safe and hold on to a portion of my accumulated home down payment money. Most of the people I asked suggested that I immediately eliminate the student loans and finally be done with them. And I admit, that is the path I was heading in and the decision that I already made prior to posting the update linked above. However, I decided against making a full payoff and instead pretty much split the difference. I kept about half of that portion of the down payment (remember, I have much more saved for my eventual down payment on a home than the $17 thousand that I’m hemming and hawing over) and I used the other half to pay down my student loans.

Down to $9 thousand!

This leads me to have about $9 thousand left outstanding in my student loan debt. I’ve written this several times on this blog, but when you consider that my repayment started only about 7 years ago and my initial loan amount was approximately $121 thousand, the fact that I’ve reduced the total amount of my student loans to $9 thousand is absolutely incredible. Yes, I’m going to blow my own horn on this accomplishment – it’s amazing and I didn’t do it with any handouts, large gifts from wealthy family members, or gimmicky consolidation or loan reduction programs. I worked hard, used my free time to earn more money, and lived a conservative and relatively frugal life (and I continue to do all three of these things today). And wouldn’t you know it, but this type of hard work actually paid off?

Amazing, right?

I want to take a little bit of space during this happy post to write something similar to what I wrote a few months ago when I hit $17 thousand in student loan debt. If you remember that entry, I wrote about what was going on in my life when I had accumulated my first $17 thousand in student loan debt. Well, I’d like to do that again, but this time I’d like to recall what was going on in my life as I built up my first $9 thousand in debt.

In order to do this correctly, we have to take a short trip back in time. All the way back to the year… 2000!

Unlike the post a few months ago, I was not yet a Sophomore in college when I accumulated my first $9 thousand in student loan debt. Instead, I was a second semester college Freshman. This was Spring 2000 and the major event in my life back then was joining my fraternity. The pledge process lasted 6 weeks (7 if you count spring break) and was pretty entertaining. While I won’t go into the details of what my pledge brothers and I did to join the fraternity, it’s nothing that I wouldn’t do again (and probably keel over in laughter at in the process).

I was also doing pretty well in school during the Spring 2000 semester. In fact, during Spring 2000 I was just coming off of a pretty powerful first semester of college in Fall 1999. During that first semester, I scored a 3.8 GPA and was on the Dean’s List. I racked up straight As or A- grades in all of my courses except for Western Civilization where I took home a B+. Truth be told, the instructor of the Western Civilization class did not put together a very good syllabus and was pretty confused with the honors cohort of students that I was in. I remember that very clearly. He wanted to teach what he typically taught, but because my class was an honors section of the course and because our honors section was part of this honors cohort, the poor guy was just confused and didn’t do a good job explaining the otherwise fascinating history of Western Civilization.

I scored a 3.3 GPA in Spring 2000 with mostly As and Bs in my classes. My lowest grades that semester we straight Bs in Elementary Italian and Discovery in Natural Science. I was (and am) totally fine with those grades. I tried to learn Italian as a language, but I found that it really only reinforced my existing knowledge of Spanish. And that’s not an entirely bad outcome in the long run since I have a pretty good working usage of the Spanish language. Also, I didn’t actually go to the Discovery in Natural Science classes. I had an agreement in this class (and in my Fall 1999 College Algebra class) that I would just show up for tests because I earned As in my high school classes that were more advanced than these courses – both of which were general education requirements at Monmouth University. During Fall 1999, I scored an A in College Algebra (obviously, I scored an A in Advanced Calculus in high school) and during Spring 2000, I scored a B in Discovery in Natural Science (which was fine with me considering there were only two tests and those were the only two times I went to class).

I know these grades because I can still access my student profile online. So no, I didn’t memorize them!

Spring 2000 was a busy semester for me between pledging, working for the school’s information technology department, and school. I wouldn’t go back and change anything, but I would probably have spent less time concerned with academics than I used to back then. You always hear people say that if they knew then what they know now, they would have changed this or that in their lives. Well, if I knew then what I know now – that hyper-focusing on general education classes doesn’t really do much to increase your job preparedness or overall learning – then I wouldn’t have spent so much time studying that semester.

Although, it wasn’t all just studying. Joining the fraternity came with its benefits. Back then (and somewhat still today), the campus was absolutely dead when it came to fun student social activities. Sure, there were university-sponsored events, but those events were inundated with university minders and were generally cheesy. After I was initiated into the fraternity, the social aspects of college picked up considerably. Along with the social part of college kicking it up, I was given more opportunities to express my leadership abilities. And I continue to do that to this day, though I’ve personally decided to pull back on playing the leader of the pack in the national fraternity and instead have opted to focus on developing the leadership and professional potential in our undergraduates.

But back in Spring 2000, life was good. I don’t have many complaints or aggravations about that time in my life. Here’s a picture of me hanging out with one of my lady friends (she’s the awkward smiley face – it’s my blog, not hers, so I don’t know if she wants to be put out there in public).

spring-2000

Those of you who know me aren’t surprised at seeing the SoBe bottle… or at the fact that the liquid in that Power SoBe (fruit punch) is clear!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. Since I started repaying my student loans in July 2006, I’ve repaid a total of $112 thousand in principal to various lenders including the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank. I currently owe $9 thousand in principal to the United States Department of Education’s federal Direct Loans program. This loan is serviced by the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority. To date, I’ve repaid over $35 thousand in interest to these lenders. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Decisions, Decisions – Retire Student Loans Forever Or Increase Down Payment?

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Ah… the more things change, the more they miraculously manage to stay the same. Just a few days ago I posted an “update” on my student loan repayment progress. In that update, I noted that there really wasn’t an update to provide because I haven’t been making excess payments to the USED / MOHELA. No excess payments = no major principal balance drops to write about on the blog. It’s a pretty simple equation, right?

The update from the other day was based on the premise that my roommate was leaving to take a job in another state and that I needed to find a new place to live. That update also noted that I’ve been holding back the excessive additional student loan payments so I can use those funds to purchase a home in the next few weeks.

Could this all be over soon?

Well, like the opening line of this entry states – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It turns out that the organization that was going to hire my roommate has decided to cancel all hirings for the time being. The next possible time that they’ll be bringing in new hires is this October… maybe. This is another topic entirely, but I’ve been telling my roommate for a few years that he needs to diversify his career prospects. He’s in the process of doing so right now, but let’s not digress from the purpose of this entry.

With the change in my roommate’s career switch I’ve been presented with a unique opportunity. Clearly, I’m going to push back my plans to purchase a home for a few more months. It just makes sense to rent the townhouse that I’m in through at least October, if not through next spring (I would stay through next spring in the event that my roommate doesn’t make/isn’t offered the career change in October). The unique opportunity that I now find myself in is that through saving to increase the size of my down payment, I’ve been able to put away more than the $17 thousand that I need to eliminate the remaining balance of my student loans. Most folks would make the quick decision that since I’ll be staying in my rental for a few more months, if not longer, then I should some of these funds that I’ve saved up to retire the student loan debt once and for all.

After all the aggravation that I’ve been through with my student loans, that’s an extremely appealing option!

However, as a guy who tries to be reasonable and thoughtful on issues of money and personal finance I can’t help but think that I should just save this money and use it to increase the amount of my down payment when I do eventually purchase a home. Retire the remaining balance of my student loan debt or keep hording money for an eventual down payment? It’s an interesting dilemma to consider.

Trust me, I’ve been giving this issue some deep consideration.

I think the benefits of saving the money for a future down payment are obvious. The total amount of the mortgage is reduced and since I didn’t plan on putting 20% down for the new home, by increasing my eventual down payment I’ll be able to put down 20% and avoid having to pay private mortgage insurance. Further, the more you put down, the better rate you can demand (even in a world of low rates). As a guy with near-perfect credit, increasing the amount of my down payment would be an ideal use of these funds.

And yet… I can’t shake the idea from my head that if I decide to use these funds to retire my loans, then I’m literally about two weeks away from having absolutely no student loan debt, period. Gone. Done. Eliminated. Game over.

The benefit of repaying my student loan debt? In financial terms I’d be retiring debt that is currently accruing interest at 4.25% and (when I purchase a home) replacing it with a mortgage at a lower interest rate. That’s good for my financial health over the long-term. The bigger benefit to retiring my student loans, though, isn’t something that you can easily quantify. The bigger benefit is the combination of financial freedom and the incredible feeling of accomplishment that comes with repaying such an immense amount of debt. The benefits of saving this money aside, I just can’t shake the idea of how awesome it would feel to know that I repaid $121 thousand in student loan principal and another $30 something thousand in interest in under 7 years.

For those of you who are analyzing whether or not I would suffer from using $17 thousand to retire my student loans, here’s some information for you. If I wait until November or December to buy a home, I can pretty much replace that entire $17 thousand with new income from the summer months. In essence, I’d net out even and wind up in a state of stasis, but with one less bill each month. My minimum student loan repayment is $333.50 per month – so that amount would be put towards my future down payment, too.

What to do… decision, decisions… What do you think? If you were in this situation – what would you do?

The Very Definition of Being So Close And Yet So Far Away!

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Long-time readers of my blog know that I usually post a monthly update on my student loan repayment progress. The last such update was posted back in January and it was pretty well-received by the readers. Thanks for that, everyone! Since January, I haven’t posted any updates about my repayment progress. There’s a good reason for the lack of updates, though: there hasn’t been much progress since January. Shocking for a guy who has managed to repay so much in such a short period of time, right? Well, here’s the story…

I've paid SO much more than this in student loans over the last six and a half years!

I’ve paid SO much more than this in student loans over the last six and a half years!

Sometime towards the end of January/early February, my roommate told me that he finally received a call back for a job that he’s been waiting to hear from for several years. He said that if he passed the different qualification rounds (he did and there was never a question on whether he would) and the agency offered him a position (which was and remains likely), then he would have to move out at some point in the middle of May.

Just like any sane person, I reacted to this news by weighing my future housing options. Through this process, I realized very quickly that my options for selecting a living situation in 2013 are much different than they were 5 or 10 years ago. Today, I don’t really need a roommate to pay for the too-high rent required for the three bedroom, two and a half bath townhouse that I currently live in. However, only having to pay half of the rent and half of the utilities obviously makes my financial life easier and I can’t complain about the roommates that I’ve had over the years – they’ve all been great with paying their share of the costs. And they’ve been good guys, too.

However, I’ve gotten a bit older and what I’ll accept for living space today is different than what I would have accepted 5 or 10 years ago. For example, I could very easily continue life as a renter and move into a less expensive condo or apartment that is much closer to the beaches and the bars that I go to (on those rare occasions when I actually go out to the beach or bar). But not only would continuing to be a single renter be a poor use of my income, living in those areas is not really where I want to be at this point in my life. Granted, “those areas” are only minutes from where I live now, but as a guy with an aggravating commute I’d rather be as close to the main highways as possible. The area that I live in right now is less than a mile from the Garden State Parkway and less than 5 minutes to other major highways in the area. It’s nice to have that type of access to main highways.

I’ve quickly gotten off topic here. The point of this entry is to provide a brief student loan update! I’m in an awkward position right now with my students loans. For the first time in years, I haven’t made any extra, excessive payments to the USED / MOHELA loan because I’ve been saving my money to buy a new home. Of course, as you might imagine there are two aggravating items that I have to report on about this situation.

First, I have $17 thousand still outstanding on my student loans. What is aggravating about the outstanding balance is that I have the entire amount (and then some) sitting in a savings account right now. Why not use the money in the savings account to pay off the balance of the loans, you ask? Simple. I’m saving those funds to buy a house. Just like the detour I had to take last year when my Honda Civic crapped out and I bought a brand new Ford Escape, I’ve been presented with a situation that requires me to change my financial goals.

Second, between principal payments and interest over the last nearly 7 years that I’ve been repaying my students loans, I’ve given private entities like NJHESAA and MOHELA and government agencies like the USED some $104 thousand in principal payments and some $35 thousand in interest payments for a combined nearly $140 thousand no longer in my possession. Just to give you a perspective on how that type of repayment has had a lasting, real impact on my life – the $140 thousand from the repayment could have easily combined with the $17 thousand that I’m sitting on to allow me to buy the condo that I’m considering purchasing – with absolutely no mortgage.

No mortgage.

NO.

MORTGAGE.

Of course, that’s not the situation that I’m in and that’s not the way my financial life has progressed. And I’m not mad… Am I aggravated about it all sometimes? Yes. But definitely not mad. In fact, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to position myself such that I can buy a home at 32 years old when there are so many people in my generation that just aren’t able to do so yet. And the path that I’ve taken to get here will allow me to decorate the walls in my soon-to-exist-home-office with various degrees and professional commendations. Not such a bad outcome, really. Does buying a home mean that my plan to retire my student loan debt by this summer is going to change? Yes. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to push that repayment plan out a little bit longer. But pushing the repayment plan out a little bit longer because I’m buying a home isn’t so bad!

So instead of reading about how I retired my student loan debt in the summer of 2013 you’re probably going to have to wait a few extra months – possibly a full year – to read that update. In any event… stay tuned!

Reminiscing About My First $17 Thousand in Student Loan Debt

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Warning: This has to be one of my longer entries on JerseySmarts.com. In this entry, I take a look back at what I was thinking and doing way back when I had only a meager $17 thousand in total student loan debt. Oh, and I’m talking about only having incurred $17 thousand on my way up the mountain – not where I sit right now as I come back down the mountain. As you might imagine, back when I had incurred only $17 thousand in student loan debt it was a totally different world. Read on and enjoy!

Just about one month after my last student loan update, I am back again with an update that I’m sure you were already expecting. And that update is that my total student loan debt has dropped another thousand bucks to $17 thousand. It’s nice to have these frequent drops in the total amount that I have left outstanding – especially considering that I’m coming down from a peak total of $121 thousand no longer than just six and a half years ago. Pretty amazing.

Just $17 thousand left to go

For this update, though, I wanted to go back a little bit further than six and a half years ago. Before I wrote this update, I went back and looked at where I was in my collegiate career when I first owed about $17 thousand in student loans. Follow along with me here, folks… If I’m working backward from the top of the student loan debt mountain, then I already repaid the loans I took out for “cost of living” expenses from my graduate school years (the dumbest, worst debt that a student can ever take out). And I’ve already repaid any student loans that I used for actual academic expenses in graduate school. Going back a little bit further… I’ve repaid all of the student loans that I took out for rent and living expenses while an undergraduate (another dumb use of borrowed funds) and I’ve repaid all of my academic-based student loans from my senior and junior years of college. And I’ve even repaid my student loans from most of my second semester of my sophomore year.

If you do the math (and I have), then right now I’m in the process of repaying the student loans that I took out to pay for the first semester of my sophomore year in college (and, of course, my freshman year before then). The first semester of my sophomore year of college began in September 2000…

That’s a long time ago!

Let’s see what I remember from way back during the fall semester of college in the year 2000…

Back during the Fall 2000 semester, I lived on campus in a dorm named Laurel Hall. My room was A1 in the A Suite (our joke was that we lived in A1, like the steak sauce – not sure if it was funny then… or now). My roommate, who I called “Roommate,” was a pitcher on the Monmouth baseball team. I remember that he was pretty good, but I don’t recall ever going to see him play in a game (looking back, I wish I had gone to at least one game). Watching the college’s sports teams wasn’t a big thing back when I was a sophomore mainly because the school’s facilities were pretty sad. The football field looked worse than most big-time high school programs (it still only has one set of bleachers) and the basketball “arena” was a glorified high school gym. Things were much, much different than the beautiful, high-end Multipurpose Activity Center that sits on campus now. I wish that arena was there when I was an undergraduate. My friends and I could have had a lot of fun times in that place!

Academically, I was just coming off being on Dean’s List and this would be the last time that I ever made Dean’s List, but not because of academic reasons. As I progressed through college and wore my fraternity letters to my classes (by Fall 2000 I was already an initiated member of my fraternity), I found that some of the older professors stereotyped me and my work. I would turn in A level work (I’m an adjunct professor now – trust me, my work was that good) and some professors just wouldn’t give me a grade higher than a C. Hey, some people are just miserable bastards and many of those miserable bastards were my humanities professors. More on that in a future entry on the blog, I’m sure.

Speaking of the fraternity, in Fall 2000 I was the chapter’s Community Service Chairman and Social Chairman. Those were two big jobs since we performed 2 – 3 community service events each weekend (that’s not even an exaggeration – we won awards for all of the service that we performed). Plus, we’d hold at least one mixer (i.e. a closed party with a sorority) each week and one open party (i.e. a party for non-Greek students) each week. It was intense and a lot of fun.

But the memories aren’t all rosy and happy.

In fact, towards the end of Fall 2000 I distinctly remember a not so pleasant thought that I had while sitting at my on-campus job in the library (I was the IT assistant for the library and getting paid a few bucks through the Federal Work-Study program). Even though I liked “Roommate” and I enjoyed interacting with my fraternity brothers, I distinctly remember thinking that I really should transfer out of Monmouth over the winter break. I’m not sure if I can put a single reason on why I thought that I should transfer, but I remember getting the Rutgers University application, filling it out, getting the required supporting documentation from the Registrar’s Office, and putting the application package together. The only thing that I didn’t do with the application package is actually send it out.

If I had to name a few reasons why I thought it would be a good idea to transfer, I’d suggest that it had to do with the Monmouth social scene, the postgraduate prospects for professional-level networking as a member of my fraternity, the growing bias I was seeing in my academic scores, and the overall cost of attending college. I’ll tackle these quickly and in order:

Monmouth Social Scene. You don’t have to go to Monmouth for more than a few weeks to quickly find out that the social scene gets real ugly, real quick. It’s not that your fellow students aren’t fun to hang out with (they are) and it’s not that the university doesn’t try to host a variety of different events to keep students engaged (to their great credit, they do). The biggest “social” problem at Monmouth is the ultra-zealotry with which the local police officers choose to enforce their personal interpretations of the law. I can tell you stories about police officers entering the home that I rented off-campus at 2:30am when it was just me and one of my roommates awake watching television or playing a video game. No alcohol, never any drugs, no party going on, no noise, and no neighbors – the local police just thought that they had a right to enter our rental home at will. And if you think that’s bad, then imagine what those same overzealous officers acted like when there WAS a party going on… not fun.

For the money I was paying and the way I was being treated with a bias in my classes for wearing fraternity letters, I didn’t think that I should keep myself on a campus where, at the time, you couldn’t really have a lot of fun without being abused (sometimes physically) by the local police.

Postgraduate Fraternity Prospects for Professional-Level Networking. I didn’t just join a fraternity to hang out with the same group of guys, go to parties, and wear the same t-shirt as my fraternity brothers. One of the major reasons why I joined a fraternity is because of the professional-level networking that you should be able to receive as an older undergraduate member and as an alumnus of the organization. Back in Fall 2000, my fraternity didn’t have a lot of that going on – if any. In fact, we didn’t interact much with our larger alumni base other than hearing about one or two of the “older guys” who happened to have jobs in the area. Not really my idea of impressive professional-level networking. As an aside (and, again, a longer discussion for a different entry), since I graduated in Spring 2003 I’ve worked my butt off to make sure that there is a more fluid understanding of our chapter alumni and that our undergraduates and graduating seniors have a greater possibility of getting a job or at least an internship from one of our own.

Anyway, back in Fall 2000 I wasn’t very impressed with the larger organizational structure of the fraternity. More on that to come…

Bias in Academic Courses. I’ve already written about this above, but probably the biggest concern that I had back during the first semester of my sophomore year was the blatant bias that some of my older, stodgy professors (I was an English major – had a bunch of old codgers teaching me) had towards me and my work. After paying all of that money to attend college and having worked my ass off in high school (I graduated with above a 4.0 GPA) and during my freshman year of college, I didn’t want some stupid, asshole professors telling me that I was only an “average” writer because I wore Greek letters on my chest. Screw that. People like that have no place in academia and should be thrown out of colleges and universities around the nation. I guaranty that the money I’ve made off of my writing on this blog FAR surpasses the money that those old buzzards EVER made writing for the masses (i.e. not writing bullshit academic texts). Those miserable sons of bitches are what I keep in mind when I teach my classes – I go out of my way to NOT act like any of them.

Back in Fall 2000, this bias was just about enough to get me to leave Monmouth.

Cost of Attending College. Believe it or not, the total cost of college wasn’t really a big concern for me back in Fall 2000. Every once in a while my Mom would say something about my student loans and how expensive this whole thing was going to be. In truth, though, I don’t think anyone in my family (myself included) realized back then that I was going to be facing a $121 thousand dollar mountain of student loan debt when all was said and done. No one could have imagined that my postgraduate life would be put on hold in so many different ways for nearly seven years while I repaid my student loans. How can you predict something like that happening when you have no experience working with these types of loans?

Still, though, back in Fall 2000 I knew that I was attending an expensive school when compared to Rutgers University, which was just up the road.

I can’t really put my finger on the catalyst that made me stay at Monmouth. From the fraternity standpoint, there were two distinct events that helped change my mind. The first one happened in October or November 2000 when my car broke down right in the middle of Route 36 late on a Sunday night (could have been 10:30pm or so). I knew that most of the chapter was at the weekly chapter meeting at the time, but after my car was pushed off the highway by a local police officer I still called the landline in one of the houses where a bunch of the older guys lived. The guy who answered the phone had to be in his mid-20’s (just like now, back then a lot of the guys who graduated wound up sticking around in the area and living with each other to save money). I don’t think I ever shared more than 10 or 11 words with the guy. Without thinking twice, he jumped in his car, drove to the local Pathmark, picked me up, and took me back to the dorms. It was incredible. That openness and willingness to help someone out when they really needed some help changed some of my postgraduate thoughts about the fraternity.

The second event that helped change my mind was a month or so later during December 2000 when the then-President of the chapter was driving me to one of our events and spoke directly about me becoming the next President of the chapter. He said that he would tell everyone that he was running for re-election, but that he would resign from the election before the vote took place because he wanted someone like me to be the President of the chapter. That meant a lot to me for two reasons. First, it was nice to see that someone at Monmouth could recognize the innate leadership potential that I have in group settings (not being arrogant, just being accurate). Second, it helped to further change my mind on some of my postgraduate thoughts about the fraternity.

Once I was elected the President of the fraternity (the then-President did, indeed, drop out of the race before the vote and I won by forfeit and accepted the position with a voice vote of acclimation) I still thought that I might leave Monmouth. I told myself that I would give it one semester as President and see what happened. If I didn’t like leading the chapter, then I would transfer out of Monmouth and spend the second half of my college career having some fun at a college that didn’t cost an arm and a leg and wasn’t biased against me. If I enjoyed being the President, though, I’d have to seriously consider staying at Monmouth and finishing my academic career there.

Well, the rest is history. After a few months of being President and getting my hands dirty in reshaping some aspects of the fraternity, I never thought about transferring out of Monmouth again. Then, one of my good friends from high school joined the fraternity and I had someone to hang out with and lead the chapter with me. But it’s interesting to think back about what type of life-changing decisions I was considering – and what life-changing decision I ultimately made – way back in Fall 2000!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. Since I started repaying my student loans in July 2006, I’ve repaid a total of $104 thousand in principal to various lenders including the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank. I currently owe $17 thousand in principal to the United States Department of Education’s federal Direct Loans program. This loan is serviced by the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority. To date, I’ve repaid over $35 thousand in interest to these lenders. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.