Well, well, well… I have a bit of a surprise to report in the latest update to my student loan repayment story. Actually, this isn’t really a surprise any more than it is an obvious eventuality of my repayment system, but it’s certainly a change from the previous updates that I put up here on the blog.

As it turns out, my student loan debt has dropped by another $1,000 in total outstanding principal (of course – or else I wouldn’t be writing this entry). My total student loan debt went from $78 thousand down to $77 thousand. Pretty good, right? However, this time around the reduction comes not from a lower principal balance on my New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority loan. Nope. Rather, the loan that I have with the United States Department of Education now sits at about $54 thousand instead of the $55 thousand that it has been since I started down this repayment path.

And that’s where the obvious eventuality comes from that I referred to earlier. This was obviously going to happen at some point since I have an automatic payment setup with the USDOE to pay the monthly amount due on their loan. And this comes at a good time, too, since my most recent payment to the NJHESAA was less than $1,000 and thus I might not have had one of these fancy reports to post on JerseySmarts.com for you, my good readers!

I just checked my NJHESAA repayment projections and it seems like there might be a nice surprise in store for my repayment plans around early to mid-October. There’s a strong chance that I might be reporting a double drop either around the first or fifteen of October (if not beforehand). So let’s hope that the repayment projections stay their course, huh?!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $77 thousand, which breaks down to $23 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

We’re all used to this routine by now, right? It’s been about two weeks since my last student loan announcement, so that must mean that it’s time to announce another thousand dollar drop in my student loan debt. That’s right – my student loan debt is now down to $78 thousand. More importantly, however, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA) portion of my student loan debt is now down in the $23 thousand range.

The drop in my NJHESAA student loan debt is important to note because this particular debt is the one that I’ve focused on in this repayment plan. I think that once I get rid of this particular portion of the student loan debt, I’ll be in a much better position, overall. These days, I’m sending about $2,500 in to the NJHESAA folks each month. I would rather, of course, have that money remaining in my bank account each month!

Actually, I’ll probably just direct some of those funds towards repaying my United States Department of Education (USDOE) student loan. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it…

According to the spreadsheet that I prepared to monitor, track, and project my NJHESAA student loan repayment, it looks like I’ll have this loan paid off in less than a year. My original goal was to have it repaid by April 1, 2011 and I think that goal is still attainable if a few things go in my direction financially. However, I take an ultraconservative stance when I update my spreadsheet so at this point, it looks like I’ll have this loan repaid slightly after April 1, 2011.

And I never factor into my projections the fact that I’ve made some money in the stock market. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about selling out of some stocks (like Ford and Bank of America). If I decide to sell out of those stocks any time soon, I’ll more than likely direct my earnings on those sales directly to repaying this student loan debt. Trust me, if I decide to do that there will be a celebration on this blog since it’ll chop the remaining balance of this particular loan down to a very easily manageable size!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $78 thousand, which breaks down to $23 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $55 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Anyone that has been following my student loan repayment story here on JerseySmarts.com has to know that this plan is pretty tough to stay on. There are a variety of interests that pull my money from my pocket and they range in value and necessity from buying new clothes (a necessity at times) to making donations to causes that I care about (a necessity for personal and tax reasons) to trying to get a bite to eat at a restaurant every once in a while (not a necessity at all). However, I refrain from spending money foolishly because I have to repay this student loan debt.

And when I stick to the plan, I get to make announcements like this one. Today, my student loan debt has dropped from $80 thousand to $79 thousand. I hope that by now, you’ve become accustomed to the thousand dollar drop every other week. I hope to keep that going through the end of the calendar year. And, frankly, with the addition of my adjunct professor paycheck starting in about 6 weeks, I expect to be able to jump over a grand here and there and make announcements that I’m two thousand dollars lower than the previous update.

But that will come in time.

I’ve taken a look at my finances through the end of November and it’s pretty interesting. I’m projecting to bring my student loan debt down by another $10 thousand or so before December 31st. That’s not bad. And I plan to accomplish that by beginning another goal that I have – to make this the fiscal year (July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011) where I achieve my highest level of support for the Foundation where I serve as a Trustee. Granted, that may amount to only a few thousand dollars worth of donations over the course of now through next June 30th, but it’s a goal that I want to achieve.

And when I think about how – once the student loans are paid off – I’ll be able to use some of this extra money that I’m currently diverting towards my student loans and put it towards other causes, that’s pretty exciting. I’d like to sponsor scholarships for undergraduate and graduate student that are struggling to get their degree. I’ll be able to do that once these student loans are gone. I want to invest more in the market. I’ll be able to do that, too, once these student loans go away. There are limitless possibilities as to what I can achieve once this albatross is gone from around my neck.

Right now, though, I’m celebrating another thousand bucks biting the dust!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $79 thousand, which breaks down to $24 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $55 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

It’s been nearly a week since my last update on JerseySmarts.com and the reason for that is because, well, I didn’t have anything compelling to write about! Also, I’ve been swamped at the office which is actually turning out to be a good thing since I’m getting a lot of work completed before I head off to Boston for a few days at the end of the month. All of that aside, when I’m in doubt about what to write for JerseySmarts.com, I just check where my student loan debt sits because, usually, there is a good story to tell.

And there is another good story to tell today.

As of a few days ago, my total outstanding student loan debt reached $80 thousand. Like I’ve said over and over again in my recent entries on student loan debt, this is a big accomplishment! What makes me even happier is that while I still owe the United States Department of Education some $55 thousand, I’ve reduced my New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA) debt down to about $25 thousand. For perspective’s sake, I started 2010 owing NJHESAA about $42 thousand.

So I’m just chopping away at them piece by piece. And, according to my projections, I could eliminate this debt early in 2011. Of course, that depends on a lot of different things falling into place as well as me not being able to generate any additional income (and thus be able to repay more of this loan) before 2010 ends.

What I am most pleased with regarding my NJHESAA debt is that this year I’ve only paid about $1,200 in interest costs. I’m not sure what I paid to NJHESAA in interest last year, but I’m sure it was multiple thousands of dollars. Now, I’m not sure how the rest of my calendar year is going to shake out or the exact dates that my future planned payments are going to be processed, but there is a chance that I’ll only pay this company another $600 in interest before 2010 is over. Capping the interest paid on this loan to less than $2 thousand in a single year is monumental. Huge!

Anyway, if you’re going out today or this week, then be sure to have a drink for me to help celebrate this accomplishment! It’s funny… when I graduated from Rutgers with six figures of student loan debt, I thought that the situation was unmanageable and too out of control for me to ever be in control. However, here we are today at yet another milestone and not only do I feel in control, but I feel in more and more control with everyday that passes. 🙂

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $80 thousand, which breaks down to $25 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $55 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Sometimes I write these student loan entries and wonder what angle I’m going to take on telling my repayment story. Will I write about how painful it is to force myself to not go out and “play” at the bar with the rest of the adults? Will I write about how I don’t shop for clothing as often as I used to and how I find that getting certain clothing items at Wal-Mart is just as good as getting an item from a department store? Or maybe I’ll just write about how my repayment plan has evolved since I set it in motion at the very end of 2009.

Today, I write something much simpler and much more exciting. As of about a week and a half ago, my student loan debt fell to $81 thousand which represents a total of $40 thousand repaid in loan principal and fully one-third of my initial student loan debt no longer outstanding. That’s huge! Sure, it’s only one-third of the way to repaying a gigantic amount of money and the $40 thousand that I’ve repaid in principal doesn’t account for the over $10 thousand that I’ve repaid in interest. But that’s okay! I’m really happy that I’m at this $81 thousand mark because I know the next “big” milestone is hitting $80 thousand in total debt outstanding which will be quickly followed by breaking out of the $80 thousand range and into the high $70 thousand range.

That’s progress!

How much progress, you ask? Well, you can scroll to the end of this entry to read my standard boilerplate on these posts where I talk about how much debt I started with and where I’m at today. However, let’s think about this in terms of when I began this aggressive repayment plan back in December 2009. At that time, I owed a total of about $98 thousand; I’ve reduced the principal owed on that debt by $17 thousand in about 6 months. That’s tremendous progress! But what’s great about this repayment plan (and if you know anything about how loans work, you know where I’m going here) is that the more I repay, the less I have to pay in daily accruing interest.

In other words, when I began this repayment plan back at the end of 2009, I was paying something like $8.50 per day in interest to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA). Today, I pay NJHESAA $5.38 each day in interest – a reduction of more than $3.00 per day. That’s huge when you consider that each payment usually hits the NJHESAA’s coffers every 15 days or so. That’s $45 more dollars every two weeks that can be applied directly to reducing my outstanding principal.

Stick around folks, I think the repayment plan is really going to heat up as the summer moves on…

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $81 thousand, which breaks down to $26 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $55 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.