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Congrats on the baby! You’re not a loser that these are still in your life, but those feelings are real! I’ve been there and learned that I was financially uneducated—not something that was taught in school, nor did I have parents who could guide me.
This is might not be the answer you’re looking for, but I cut my lifestyle to put extra $ towards them and when I got a raise that additional money went to loan payments (didn’t increase my lifestyle). It was the rip the bandaid off approach.
If I was in your position, I would cut lifestyle, pile up as much savings as possible and once the baby has arrived use that money to cover the medical bills and throw the rest at the student loans. Baby will bring new expenses into your life, but you will have already cut your lifestyle so hopefully you can then budget for adding some additional $ to the loans. Best wishes—you got this!
Not sure how relevant this will be since you say you consolidated already, but I had a lot of loans so I went through one by one making double or triple payments on the one with the highest interest until it was paid off then did the same with the next highest interest (I did this by not dramatically upgrading my lifestyle as my income increased, and continuing to pay roughly the same amount toward loans every month even as my required monthly payments went down).
My advice on refinancing - consider if it’s really worth giving up the protections like forbearance etc that come with federal loans. You’ll lose all that forever if you refinance. If you still want to, look on nerd wallet, they do a good job laying out the options. You can apply for a few at the same time and just the take best offer (in my case it was earnest but you’ll have more options than me). Aim for the lowest rate you can get and a monthly payment you’d be comfortable with if your finances take a hit in the future, and then overpay it.
It took me maybe 6 years to pay off a little over $30k
Yes this is a good point too, although the covid relief doesn’t apply to all federal loans anyway. I’d guess OP isn’t getting any breaks because they already consolidated. Refi is really great for people with a high credit score and high interest private loans, but it’s almost never the best choice for federal loans.
For context: I consolidated my loans last year which helped lower my overall monthly payment a little.
Open to hearing about your experiences in refinancing too (who did you use?), pursuing a legal route, etc. Most of my close friends have already paid theirs off and I feel like a total loser that I’m so behind.
~50k 😫 Doable, but still a big scary number
I know this isn’t exactly what you asked, but my mom always tells me not to worry about paying them down too quickly bc in 15-20 years, the amount you originally took out the loan for will feel SO small bc of inflation.
Hope that helps your anxiety a bit ❤️
Pro
But interest 😭 I’ve been paying of my federal loans since I graduated college (7 years ago) and just realized the balance has barely changed because my default payments (before pandemic forbearance) were only covering interest. So shitty