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Quick question about student loan repayment. I just graduated with a BA and will be going overseas to get my MSc. I will also be moving to the UK permanently. Because of the huge hassles involved with making student loan payments from outside the US (fees are outrageous), I plan to pay off all of my student loans in 3 years. Will have about 50K in loans (all federal, mostly subsidized) by the time I finish my master's in 2011. Is it possible for me to enroll part time in online classes at a community college once I'm done with my master's simply to take advantage of an extra year of student loan deferral? It would be great if the government could cover the interest for another year while I work full time/aggressively pay the loans off. I did the math and enrolling part time at a community college, which is all you need for deferral, would be cheaper than paying the annual interest. Seems too easy, though. I'm trying to figure out the quickest and most efficient way of paying these drat things off, so any experience with this would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance  .
amethystbliss fucked around with this message at 21:52 on May 17, 2010 |
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May 17, 2010 21:48
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Pillowpants posted:You have to be taking at least 2 classes to defer student loans. I know people who have done this. .
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May 18, 2010 01:30
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dopaMEAN posted:second, related question: I too am considering taking out subsidized loans to pay off my unsubsidized loans in order to save a few hundred dollars in interest over the next few years. I don't think they really care if you give them large payments, though I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any reason why this might be a bad idea.
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Jun 5, 2010 22:06
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Grumpicat posted:I couldn't find the right thread for this.. Here is an example of our weekly grocery list. Typical weekly grocery list for breakfast Stonyfield Organic Yogurt with Oats ($3.00 for the large tub) Oats ($3 per year for a huge thing of oats). Cereal ($3 for a big box of generic cereal) Gallon of milk ($4) Dozen of free-range eggs ($3) Carton of orange juice ($3) 2 loaves of Oroweat bread ($3 since they were normally buy one get one free). Typical weekly grocery list for lunch Pound of lunch meat ($7) Baked Lays chips ($4, normally buy one get one free to double as snacks) Head of lettuce ($2) Typical weekly grocery list for dinner Pack of 6 no-antibiotic added chicken breasts ($8) Pre-packaged marinades for chicken (5 for $5) Pack of peppers ($4) Onion ($1) Organic Japanese noodles ($3) Fresh broccoli ($2) Teriyaki sauce ($4) Barbecue sauce ($3) Pasta ($1) Jar of pasta sauce ($3) Flatbreads ($3) Mozzarella ($3) Pizza sauce ($1) Drinks: Mostly tap water, but we also made a lot of sweet tea by brewing tea bags ($2 tea bags, $2 sugar). Snacks: Kemp brand frozen yogurt ($3), box of fruit snacks ($3), chips (above), bananas ($2). That comes to about $88 per week for 2 people and that's with us buying lots of yuppie, super healthy brands. If you don't care about corn syrup in your bread or steroids in your chicken, you can get a LOT more. We're able to have 3 solid meals per day and some variation on chicken, pasta, pizza or some Chinese/Japanese/Thai noodle, rice or curry dish each week. Those figures also doesn't take into account the fact that we almost always have leftovers from dinner and don't actually need to do a full grocery shop once every week. As mentioned before, we also tend to go out to eat once or twice a week and bring home leftovers, so our groceries stretch a further still. Of course, you'll need a hundred bucks or so to stock a kitchen in the first place with stuff like spices, oils, condiments, flour, sugar, etc. but once you have a base to work from you'll be fine. It's also very helpful to stock up on frozen vegetables (my supermarket has amazing 10 bags for $10 sale that allows us to add veggies to our pre-purchased sauces, flatbread pizzas, etc. to make them healthier without all the extra salt from canned foods). Hope that was helpful!
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Jun 19, 2010 06:47
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Sorry for the wall of text that follows! I thought the more background info, the better advice I'll receive. My husband and I just put a deposit down on a large 2-bedroom apartment and I'm very apprehensive about the cost. Basically, we plan to rent this place on our own over the summer and share the apartment with another couple (who currently live outside of the UK) once the academic year starts. Our went would be insanely cheap if we split with this couple. The rental agency called the landlord to verify that he was okay with having 4 people in a 2 bedroom flat and he said that would be fine. We went into the rental agency ready to begin the rental process, but hit a snag. Since the couple in question don't have their UK student visas yet, we were told they can't be on the lease. They said just me and my husband would have to draw up a lease and add the couple at a later time. Needless to say, we need to make sure we can afford this place on our own if the couple backs out or the landlord changes his mind. We only have the rental agency's word that the landlord is a nice guy and would allow us to add more people, so I'm really paranoid that he will change his mind. There were others coming into the agency who wanted the flat, so we had to act very quickly and put down a deposit. I'm worried this was a bit of a rash decision. I don't want to post my husband's take home income without his permission, but basically the rent, utility bills and council tax comes to 64% of his takehome pay. He's contributing the max to his pension, making payments on his student loans and we have a small savings cushion of around £1,500. We live in the UK where healthcare is free, so we wouldn't be absolutely screwed in the event of a medical emergency. There would still be enough money left over for groceries, the occasional night out, our very modest cell phone bills and £100 or so to per month to beef up our savings or pay off some of some student loans. Neither of us have any credit card debt or other financial obligations aside from an upcoming summer vacation that's mostly paid for and my $60k in student loans ($40k now, grad program will be an additional $20k) that are deferred until November 2012. I'll be a full time graduate student in the fall so we're living on just my husband's income right now. I'll have a job that pays £900 per year (not much at all, but every little bit helps) and plan to get another part-time job. We don't own a car so we don't have car payments, insurance payments, gas expenses, worries of unexpected car repairs, etc. The flat is incredibly well-located so we won't need bus passes or have any transportation costs at all. Is this a reasonable amount to pay? I know typical calculators say no more than 30% of your income, but we're in a unique situation where he's paying for the both of us and we don't have to worry about healthcare and transportation costs. I'm freaking out about how expensive it could be if we're stuck with the lease all by ourselves and there's still time to back out if we're willing to lose the deposit. Some perspective would be much appreciated!
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Jun 20, 2010 22:30
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Does anyone in here know much about building your credit in the UK? I just moved to England with my British husband and am having trouble understanding the best way of building credit. My husband only has one credit card, his student card from 2003 which has a £500 limit (£0 balance). We went into Natwest the other day to open a joint savings account, and I mentioned that he should probably look into getting another card or increasing his credit limit in order to build his credit. I said perhaps I should look into getting a card or two as well so I could start to build my UK credit too. The guy at Natwest said I was totally off base. He said that UK credit doesn't take into account available credit, and that if I had 5 cards which each had £5,000 limit, if I applied for a mortgage or loan (which I have no intention of doing any time soon) it would show up that I am £25,000 in debt since technically I could go out and max them out at any given time. He said the best thing you could do for your credit is to have only 1 card with a very small limit. Is this right? It's contrary to everything I know about credit scores in the U.S. and Google hasn't been particularly helpful.
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Jul 9, 2010 08:40
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I checked my credit report for the first time a little over a month ago and everything was great except for a collection listed for $600 from an oral surgeon that was paid in full back in 2006. I had my wisdom teeth out when I was 17 and apparently my family never finished paying it off before I turned 18. After ringing the oral surgeon, they said that the debt became mine when I turned 18. I vaguely remember getting some strange letter from a collection agency when I was 18, but I just gave it to my grandmother who promised to figure it out. Truthfully, I was 18 and had no idea what the hell it meant. I know I was the one who had the surgery, but can they really transfer the debt/collection to me like that? I was a minor at the time and wouldn't have been able to agree to any such payment terms. Thankfully the collection agency was very understanding and said since it was paid in full 4 years ago, they didn't really care if it was on my report or not. The item has since been erased from my report, but I'm just curious about the legalities of this. FISHMANPET posted:Also, is there a goon recommended way to check my credit score? I know I can get it once a year for free, how do I do that? What's the cheapest option if I want it more often? Could info on checking credit scores be put in the OP? You can't check your credit score for free, but you can get 3 copies of your credit report for free through Equifax, Experian or TransUnion. It's typically around $7-$8 to get a copy of the score. This can all be done online. Some people recommend spreading the 3 reports out and using one of the agencies every 4 months. Whatever you do, stick to those 3 websites and don't be scammed by something like freecreditreport.com.
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Jul 26, 2010 11:14
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I was wondering if anyone had any insight on the best banks for international transfers? My husband starts a new job next week working for a U.S. company and will be telecommuting from the U.K. for a few months until he starts working from the U.S. office. His employer will pay him in U.S. dollars but we'll need access to the money in U.K. pounds so we can pay rent, etc . We're thinking he could open up a U.S. bank account, transfer the money from that account to an X.E. account, and then transfer the British currency to his U.K. account. We have no idea what the fees will be like for something like this, though. Any insight? We'd prefer to bank with a local credit union or something Stateside but it looks like using a big bank like Bank of America or something might be a good temporary solution so we can do easy transfers to X.E.?
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Apr 10, 2011 10:24
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Thanks for all of the responses. For clarification, my husband is telecommuting from the U.K. for 3 months, but then he's moving to the U.S. before me while I stay in England and finish my dissertation work. There will be an additional 2 months where he's in the U.S. and I'm in England. Getting access to British pounds is the biggest deal for the first 3 months since we'll have pretty large expenses like rent and tuition. After he leaves, I'm going to stay with his family for the remaining 2 months, so I'll still need a decent system in place but I won't be dealing with such large sums of money. I've used the Bank of America/Barclays system in the past, but I'm pretty sure there's a limit on how much you can withdraw from an ATM in a month? I'm sure if I tried to take out £1000 in one go just to pay for rent, (let alone living expenses, bills and tuition money) out of an ATM that woudn't go over well. If I were to take a Bank of America card into a Barclay's branch would they handle such large sums of money? The HSBC thing might be worth looking into, but my quick reading online suggests that those accounts are pretty expensive. Most places I've looked at suggest using a U.S. account, a U.K. account and some middle-man service like XE or PayPal (one woman said to pay her U.S. student loans from abroad she transfers money from her U.K. bank to her U.K. PayPal, then from her U.K. PayPal to her U.S. PayPal, then from her U.S. PayPal to her U.S. bank. I'll be doing it the other way around, of course, but I'm trying to avoid something as complicated as this).
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Apr 11, 2011 12:37
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kaishek posted:HSBC Advance is free online savings with an ATM card: Thanks- I just rang them up and they said we'd definitely go over the monthly withdraw limit for the savings account and would be charged $3 for every withdraw plus 4% in fees. That's way too much money to lose  . They said we're going to get slammed with fees unless we open a premier checking account, which costs $100,000 to open. Definitely don't have $100k sitting around, so back to the drawing board it is. Thanks for the suggestions, though.Edit: Called Bank of America, got my daily/monthly withdraw limit increased and will probably withdraw our funds from a cash point and pray I don't get robbed on my way to deposit a few thousand pounds in into the UK account each month. amethystbliss fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 11, 2011 |
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Apr 11, 2011 19:26
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Muppet Boy posted:Anyway, hope that helps! Feel free to ask me stuff, I'll try to answer. .
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Apr 12, 2011 20:39
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Kind of a long shot, but does anyone know a good financial advisor in the San Francisco area? My husband was working for a start up that just got bought, and we need some financial advice when it comes to his stock options.
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May 6, 2012 19:17
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Over the next few weeks, I am looking to put aside ~$55,000 into a no-risk account to save up for tuition for a program that starts in June 2014. I looked on bankrate for a 12 month CD, but the best interest rate I could find is only 1.05%. SmartyPig is 1% and would be more liquid. Am I missing anything here, or is it safe to say I should just open a SmartyPig account?
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May 11, 2013 13:05
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Cheesegod posted:I have no idea where to or how to even start investing my money. All of what I got now came from stock options from my last job. I have some more stocks (or RSUs, I guess) that vest over the next 4 years from my new job as well.
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May 15, 2013 11:38
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Question about emergency funds. We are debt free minus a low-interest car payment, and were recently able to stash away 6 months worth of emergency funds. Our 6 month emergency fund is sizeable since we live in the Bay Area, and it seems silly to put >25k into a 1% interest savings account. I know emergency funds need to be liquid, but in our situation does it make sense to put half of it into some low-risk CDs or something? Adding to the earlier question about financial advisors, I think we're in a situation where it makes sense to start looking for one. What should we be looking for? We've found a flat rate firm that doesn't directly manage accounts (just advises and helps with financial planning) and at $1k/year for 8-10 meetings (drops to $600/year after the first year), it seems pretty reasonable.
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Sep 9, 2014 18:25
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