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So I've been worrying a lot about student loans lately. I have ~13k in loans from my nursing degree. Right now I'm in school to become a nurse practitioner. My work is paying for a lot of the tuition, I estimate around 40k. However Im not sure if I can work the entire program and would need to take out loans for the remaining semesters. I estimate that I will need to take out around another 40-50k. I think a majority will be Grad plus loans with high interest rates. When I graduate I'll be making around 100k+ vs. 70k as a nurse. The amount of student loans I will need to take out seems like so much money I'm freaking out a little, but looking at the math it seems to be worth it. Thoughts? Anonymous Pie fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 6, 2018 19:28
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Seems worth it to me. looks like you can pay them off pretty quickly once you get the higher pay.
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Jan 7, 2018 00:59
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So long as you take your debt seriously and prioritize it when you're done, you're investing in yourself. NP is a good job and healthcare continues to grow. Would you take a $45k loan now to buy a business that would guarantee you $30k a year for the entirety of your career? Obviously, so make the investment.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:36
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Thanks you guys. It seems crazy to ask after having it typed out but Its just so much money. At least my work will cover a lot of it.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:30
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Okay so you know how throughout the life of your student loans you get a ton of paperwork sent to you? Starting with your school's financial aid package offer, to interest statements, bills, confirmation of payments, "we sold your loan to another company" notices, and god knows what else? As part of my New Year's resolution I'm streamlining my paper files in my house and want to shred my entire student loans file because they've all been paid off as of a few years ago. What exactly do I need to keep 1) for seven years or whatever is recommended for taxes, and 2) forever? And instead of figuring out where those exact pieces of paper are, is there a federal website I can punch in my SSN and it spits it out for me in one or two nice little pages? All of my loans were federal, and a mix of subsidized/unsubsidized if it matters. I have found this website: https://www.nslds.ed.gov/ which is probably my answer, but it doesn't recognize my info right now so I have to wait 1-3 days while it verifies my info with the SSA.
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Jan 15, 2018 03:04
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Fedloan Servicing isn't counting a loan payment I made on 11/21/17 towards PSLF because I quit my job on 11/17, and started my new job on 11/27. "Vacations: not even once" -Fedloan Servicing, apparently.
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Feb 6, 2018 17:48
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That sucks. Vacations are fine, as long as you are on a payroll when the payment goes through. Unfortunate timing in the job switch.
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Feb 6, 2018 17:55
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The Slack Lagoon posted:That sucks. Vacations are fine, as long as you are on a payroll when the payment goes through. Unfortunate timing in the job switch. Yeah I get why they did it, since sure I wasn't technically working a non-profit job on THAT specific date, but was the other 26 days of that cycle. Moves my forgiveness timeline back an extra month. Prorate me or something, goddammit!
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Feb 6, 2018 18:51
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Its getting discouraging paying my loan off. I started a new job with 35k salary, and have 25k left on my student loans. I live at my dads and pay very little in rent. There's no reason why I cant pay this off in a year's time right? Although I think the bigger question/problem is keeping the momentum going. Its very hard to take a fat check home and effectively throw it all away. Its definitely not as rewarding as, say, going to Best Buy and leaving with a cool little gadget. How do I force myself to stick to it?
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Feb 7, 2018 19:57
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It is hard, what helped me was looking at interest amounts if I paid the minimum vs paying it off early. If I paid minimum I'd be paying 30k in interest. By aggressively paying off the loan I'll only be paying 4.5k in interest. I'll have that extra 25.5k in my pocket for the future instead of it going to interest. E: using a 60mo (5 year) repayment on your loan and a 6.25% interest rate, you will pay 4.1k in interest. If you pay it off in 12 months you will only be paying 850 in interest. An extra 3.2k in your pocket isn't bad. Ee: make sure you do budget in some money for fun/gadgets! You may not be able to get everything you want, but being able to get those few things you'll get a lot of use and enjoyment out of is important to maintaining your sanity The Slack Lagoon fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 7, 2018 |
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Feb 7, 2018 21:00
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Paying it off in a year with that salary would be pretty difficult. Don't forget you have to pay taxes, eat, you need clothes, etc. Don't pay so much towards your student loans that you can't do things that make life livable. That also includes setting some money aside for fun/entertainment. Obviously don't go out and buy a 60 inch 4k tv, but also don't be so frugal that you have no fun. But if you're really do get tempted to spend it, just set up auto pay or something on your student loans for a high amount, and know that if you spend too much at Best Buy or whatever, you're going to end up over drafting. One thing that kind of helped me was thinking of my net worth/loan balance like a video game score. I actually kind of enjoyed updating everything in YNAB and watching the numbers go up/down and running the reports each month to see where I was financially.
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Feb 7, 2018 22:14
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The only reason im considering it is because living with parents means expenses are minimal. I wont be stranded on the way to work because I ran out of gas, or pass out because I ran out of food or something. I don't expect to be on this gravy train forever, so im trying to make the best of it so I dont look back and think "I could have paid XYZ off but I bought a tablet I dont use and a console I dont play".
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Feb 7, 2018 22:43
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buglord posted:The only reason im considering it is because living with parents means expenses are minimal. I wont be stranded on the way to work because I ran out of gas, or pass out because I ran out of food or something. I don't expect to be on this gravy train forever, so im trying to make the best of it so I dont look back and think "I could have paid XYZ off but I bought a tablet I dont use and a console I dont play". That is a good attitude but still a 1 year pay off is crazy aggressive on only $35K a year. I applaud your ambition but if it takes 2 years don't be down no that (probably much more realistic).
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Feb 7, 2018 22:48
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I mean, if you're able to, go for it. My gf moved in last May and because my rent essentially got cut in half, I was able to pay off my student loans completely (actually made the last payment this morning). Having few expenses and the luxury of having loved ones to fall back on in an emergency is a huge blessing, and yeah, if you can pay your loans off sooner, you'll spend less in interest and be that much closer to putting money towards things like a house or retirement accounts or whatever. Maybe set goals or something for yourself, like once you get down to 20k in student loans, buy yourself a video game.
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Feb 7, 2018 22:52
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BAE OF PIGS posted:I mean, if you're able to, go for it. My gf moved in last May and because my rent essentially got cut in half, I was able to pay off my student loans completely (actually made the last payment this morning) A few weeks back I was heavily considering a car to replace my 2002 clunker but somehow I talked myself out of it. I got a little salary increase too, so I should be able to wipe out 25k by next Feb. I'm thinking of writing a little goofy contract to myself on fancy cardstock stating the intent to finish my loan by Feb 19'. I know life happens, so I still havent bothered changing my repayment plan from "Graduated Repayment" (which only asks for $60/mo). I think I might leave it like that just in case.
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Feb 19, 2018 20:19
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I have a student loan through Sallie Mae that I used to become a commercial pilot. It wasn’t a bachelors degree or from an accredited university. I’m wanting to refinance for a lower rate and have ok-good credit but every major refinance company I’ve looked at wants an earned degree, which I don’t have. Am I stuck with a bad interest rate? Any recommended financial institutions to look at? I’m at about 7.35% for 49k and it’s depressing how much that ends up being. E: My rate went up again without them notifying me. Cool. Rolo fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Feb 23, 2018 |
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Feb 23, 2018 16:25
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Sorry, I didn't see this thread until I made my previous one. Basically I have two separate student loans: One loan was initially $16,000 but due to its high variable interest rate of hovering around 9% (currently at 9.75%)under Chase Bank. So it was around $23,000 by the time I began to pay it. The other loan is with a Credit Union, that is about $5,800 at ~6% fixed interest. Anyway, I'm currently looking at consolidation places now. Especially since I now have a good credit score hovering around the 700s to 800s. I'm curious if I should just go around to local credit unions, or try one of these six sites listed. Any recommendations?
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Mar 4, 2018 20:47
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I did a refi through citizens. Got a decent rate. Their website for payment and loan details is good enough. I bank with citizens so I got a rate discount.
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Mar 5, 2018 05:25
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Why is it so loving hard to math out student loan repayment stuff? It's trivial to find "estimates" but I'm really having trouble figuring out how to get actual numbers. Let's say I have multiple student loans with multiple APR's and when I do a normal payment, it goes towards interest first, then the loan with the highest APR. Ok, all well and good (though it would be nice to see an amortization table for this). Now let's say I want to pay extra each month towards my loan with the highest APR. When that loan gets paid off the extra money each month goes to the next highest APR, all the way down the line. I want to be able to plug in different numbers and see EXACTLY how much of a difference paying different additional amounts has on the life of my loans. I know on the surface this seems like a demanding ask, but it also seems like a SUPER common thing that someone would want to know, so how come it doesn't exist? Do I need to be an accountant just to do the math on my student loans? There's got to be an excel or a google sheets table that someone has put together somewhere doing this.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:05
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At least in some cases, it's intentionally confusing because the lenders want you to pay the most interest possible and are jackasses. Same reason that if you're not careful your extra payments will just be stored as 'paid ahead' (and continue to accrue interest) instead of decreasing principal. These two pages might help: https://studentloanhero.com/featured/debt-avalanche-vs-debt-snowball/ (article) and http://unbury.us/ (calculator)
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Mar 7, 2018 18:58
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Yeah, the answer is that written the way their policy is written now earns them several millions of dollars more a year than if they were more upfront and transparent; making principal payments is like the worst thing that can happen for a bank, because the loan is all of a sudden worth a lot less to them over the course of its lifetime (especially when the interest rates are usurious compared with current returns!) Think about it, the best the bank can do with that loan now is make another loan at 5% instead of 7%, why would they go out of their way to help you figure out how to "save" interest when their money is already working so hard for them?
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Mar 7, 2018 20:18
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Ugh it's so hosed. Hot take I know. It's just frustrating when my wife calls and talks to her lender (fedLoan btw, these aren't private loans) and they give her straight up incorrect or conflicting info each time she calls. It took them so long to switch her from IBR to standard repayment, that they didn't even end up switching her, she got auto switched when she didn't send in the paperwork for the next year's IBR.
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Mar 7, 2018 22:50
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Yeah, the answer is that written the way their policy is written now earns them several millions of dollars more a year than if they were more upfront and transparent; making principal payments is like the worst thing that can happen for a bank, because the loan is all of a sudden worth a lot less to them over the course of its lifetime (especially when the interest rates are usurious compared with current returns!) Think about it, the best the bank can do with that loan now is make another loan at 5% instead of 7%, why would they go out of their way to help you figure out how to "save" interest when their money is already working so hard for them? With federal student loans, additional payments are applied to principal on the payment date; they are not held as a prepayment of your future minimum payments. However, what most loan servicers do is advance the due date of your next payment, so if you solely rely on auto-pay for your payments, you'll "skip" a payment and not get the full (you get some) benefit of your extra payment. As an illustration: $10,000 principal loan balance at first payment due date, .5% simple interest each month on the balance, $500 monthly minimum payment 1) Person A pays $1000 in month 1 and lets auto-pay handle the rest (next payment would be in month 3). Month 1 principal balance after payment due date: $9,000 Month 2 principal balance after payment due date: $9,000 + $45 interest balance Month 3 principal balance after payment due date: $8,590 2) Person B pays $1000 in month 1, where $500 is a prepayment of the second month Month 1 balance after payment due date: $9,500 Month 2 balance after payment due date: $9,047.5 Month 3 balance after payment due date: $8,592.74 3) Person C pays $1000 in month 1, then logs in and manually makes a payment each month (or selects the "Do Not Advance Due Date" option with each payment: Month 1 balance after payment due date: $9,000 Month 2 balance after payment due date: $8545 Month 3 balance after payment due date: $8,087.73 (Person C paid in an extra $500 compared to A and B, but if A and B made an extra $500 payment in month 3, Person C would still be ahead) The first and third case is how federal student loans are supposed to work by law. So while it is true that if you let a servicer advance the due date on you without making a manual payment, you'll end up paying more in interest, you're still paying less interest than in a true prepayment scenario.
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Mar 7, 2018 23:52
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trip9 posted:Ugh it's so hosed. Hot take I know. It's just frustrating when my wife calls and talks to her lender (fedLoan btw, these aren't private loans) and they give her straight up incorrect or conflicting info each time she calls. It took them so long to switch her from IBR to standard repayment, that they didn't even end up switching her, she got auto switched when she didn't send in the paperwork for the next year's IBR. Another part of the problem is that the rules Ancillary Character posted about (and others) are not exactly easy to explain over the phone, so even if the rep 100% understands what's going on (very rare) they usually can't convey that understanding to customers. I had an outrageous 20 minute phone call with Navient that left me so frustrated that I just drew some of my efund and paid the full balance of that loan.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:13
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Ancillary Character posted:...explanation... It's nuts that you wrote all this out and gave multiple examples and it's still a pain to parse and understand (I may just be dumb though). Another thing is they bury the "pay ahead" stuff in a pretty insidious way. For fedLoan the only way to avoid pay ahead is to target your payment towards a specific loan (to be fair you should be doing this anyway to hit your high APR loans first). I'm surprised at the discrepancies between who handles your loans too, even within federal loans. I have Nelnet for my loans and they are much more upfront and it's pretty easy to see where your money is heading with them.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:31
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trip9 posted:It's nuts that you wrote all this out and gave multiple examples and it's still a pain to parse and understand (I may just be dumb though). Another thing is they bury the "pay ahead" stuff in a pretty insidious way. For fedLoan the only way to avoid pay ahead is to target your payment towards a specific loan (to be fair you should be doing this anyway to hit your high APR loans first). I'm surprised at the discrepancies between who handles your loans too, even within federal loans. I have Nelnet for my loans and they are much more upfront and it's pretty easy to see where your money is heading with them. Basically when you're prepaying, your extra payment hangs in limbo, so there's a higher principal balance for interest to be calculated against. When your payment is applied fully, but the due date of your next payment is just pushed out, future interest is calculated on the lowered principal, which results in less interest overall. I had Nelnet too, and never had to jump through any hoops to pay extra every month, so I don't know what it was like with other servicers. Well, I do have a single loan with Navient, but the rate has been moving around ~1-3%, so I never tried to pay extra on it.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:48
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I feel like I hit the servicer jackpot with Nelnet because yeah, I haven't experienced any purposefully misleading behaviors from them.
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Mar 8, 2018 02:35
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buglord posted:I feel like I hit the servicer jackpot with Nelnet because yeah, I haven't experienced any purposefully misleading behaviors from them. Great Lakes was really good (not sure if they still service federal loans). It is also crazy that we have poo poo and good companies and it all depends on who happens to be your servicer.
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Mar 8, 2018 03:45
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I've had problems with Great Lakes
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Mar 8, 2018 06:22
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PSLF question. Loan balances are forgiven after ten years service. But in order to qualify, you have to make 120 payments on a ten year repayment plan, paying it off. What the gently caress am I missing here? I just got told 88 of my payments didn't qualify because they were at the 20 year amount. I guess I'm going back to my employer's student loan payoff well for my last $2,100.
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Mar 8, 2018 20:14
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Evil SpongeBob posted:PSLF question. Loan balances are forgiven after ten years service. But in order to qualify, you have to make 120 payments on a ten year repayment plan, paying it off. What the gently caress am I missing here? I believe the payments must be on a repayment plan calculated by income (e.g., IBR) to qualify.
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Mar 8, 2018 20:16
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disjoe posted:I believe the payments must be on a repayment plan calculated by income (e.g., IBR) to qualify. This is correct. The only payment plans that qualify are the income based family and the "standard" 10 year repayment payments. No other payments are "qualifying." Sorry!
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Mar 8, 2018 20:31
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Sub Rosa posted:I've had problems with Great Lakes That is too bad. it has been 2 years since I used them but so easy to pay extra, timely letters for pay off. Hopefully they are still overall doing well for people with loans. I felt lucky the loans were with them.
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Mar 9, 2018 04:29
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Regarding PSLF, to make it even more confusing, if you were using an income-based payment plan, but no longer qualify for it, you get switched to the 10 yr payment, but at what it would have been had you chosen the 10 year plan when the loans first entered repayment, not what it would currently take to pay off the loans + accrued interest in 10 years. This is good if you're going for PSLF, since you'd get more forgiven than if you actually switched to the standard repayment plan, but can be confusing at first.
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Mar 9, 2018 05:40
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Chu020 posted:Regarding PSLF, to make it even more confusing, if you were using an income-based payment plan, but no longer qualify for it, you get switched to the 10 yr payment, but at what it would have been had you chosen the 10 year plan when the loans first entered repayment, not what it would currently take to pay off the loans + accrued interest in 10 years. This is good if you're going for PSLF, since you'd get more forgiven than if you actually switched to the standard repayment plan, but can be confusing at first. This isn't quite correct. Once you qualify for an income-based repayment plan, and can't be disqualified for it even if you start making enough money to no longer have a financial hardship. If you are on IBR, the max you will pay in a month is what the original standard repayment amount would be. If you are on a different plan, like REPAYE, your payment will continue to grow with your income. REPAYE has a lower monthly payment than IBR, so depending on how you expect your income to grow over the 10 year period, you may want to choose one plan over the other.
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Mar 9, 2018 13:12
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spwrozek posted:That is too bad. it has been 2 years since I used them but so easy to pay extra, timely letters for pay off. Hopefully they are still overall doing well for people with loans. I felt lucky the loans were with them. Agreed. They were great for me. More than half of my loans were with them and they were by far the easiest to deal with. And had the easiest website to navigate.
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Mar 9, 2018 13:19
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On the topic of PSLF, I started out on IBR and then switched to REPAYE. I've made about 5.5 years worth of payments and have 4.5 years left. My 2017 taxes have me filing single. My 2018 taxes will reflect me getting married and have two incomes. If my REPAYE payments end up significantly higher, can I switch back to IBR?
Residency Evil fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 12, 2018 |
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Mar 12, 2018 18:51
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I do married filing separately for ibr because that only counts the income of the borrower. Not sure about repaye, our loan is ibr(? I think? I know it's not repaye)
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Mar 12, 2018 19:00
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Residency Evil posted:On the topic of PSLF, I started out on IBR and then switched to REPAYE. I've made about 5.5 years worth of payments and have 4.5 years left. My 2017 taxes have me filing single. My 2018 taxes will reflect me getting married and have two incomes. If my REPAYE payments end up significantly higher, can I switch back to IBR? I'm not sure if switching from IBR to REPAYE or vice versa will reset the clock on payments.
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Mar 12, 2018 19:15
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Mourne posted:I'm not sure if switching from IBR to REPAYE or vice versa will reset the clock on payments. It doesn't, as I understand/I've found written.
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Mar 12, 2018 19:19
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