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I’m frustrated.  I’ve made $1791.00 in payments on my Private Student Loan, and I’ve only reduced the payoff balance by $1321.23.  The interest monster ate $469.77! All these payments were made between September 1 and October 9, so it isn’t like we are talking years here.  So, it only took that little demon a little over one month to eat all this money!  And this is for a 7% loan of about $25K.  The interest monster is really gorging over at Sallie Mae where I have $76,617.19 in various loans ranging from 6.8% - 7.5% fixed.  Over at Sallie, this little bugger has eaten $956.63 since May! (more…)

Dave Ramsey places a lot of emphasis on the Debt Snowball, or paying off smaller debts first so that you keep up your morale.  Obviously, since Dave Ramsey is a financial God to many, I’ve heard a lot about this.  I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of paying more interest then necessary.  Plus, if you have one large financial burden (like $100K+ in student loans) then this wouldn’t help you in making progress because there are no smaller debts.  So, I’ve been considering how I want to set my goals as far as debt payoff. (more…)

I began yesterday morning with the intention of applying for this balance transfer card.  I liked that it was 0% interest for 12 months, and I really liked that there was no balance transfer fee.  We’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a balance transfer for almost a year.  I was worried about what it would do to my FICO score (applying for new credit, and then maxing out the available credit is never good!).  However, I checked my credit score and it was 783, and so we decided that even if it went down a few points it would be worth it because of the money we are going to save in interest.  Plus, with the economy the way it is, it looks like it may be almost a year before we buy a house, so I’ll have time to get this card paid off by then. (more…)

I mentioned in my About Me page that I was going to be starting my own business.  Fortunately, it is an information centered business (tutoring) so there are almost no start up costs.  I paid $50 for 6 months of web hosting (which also includes this domain name too) and $50 for Google Ads, so that was a $100 initial investment. (more…)

Today, I spent 1/2 an hour holding and dealing with Sallie Mae on the telephone.  I wanted to increase my monthly payment.  They scheduled me to pay $457 a month for 10 years.  I wanted to change it to $547 a month for a few reasons: partly because it used the same numbers and that seemed nice and neat; partly because then it is almost exactly equivalent to the fixed expenses my fiance pays each month so it would be easier for us to ensure we’re each paying back an equal amount of our debt each month, and of course the main reason was this will reduce my payment time by 28 months.  Thats over 2 years less that I will have to pay, for an extra $90 a month.   (more…)

We’re going to be buying a house within the next year or so. As we consider taking on this additional (and large) amount of debt I’ve been doing research into how to pay it down faster. There are a lot of disputes on the wisdom of this. Many argue that mortgage debt is good debt, that money is better invested elsewhere, that we should take advantage of the tax deduction that comes with mortgage interest

However, I’ve decided that we want to pay our house off early anyway. My ultimate goal is to be totally debt free, so that everything I love is truly mine and so that I never have to face worries about where my next mortgage payment is coming form (like so many people do today!). So, I’ve been looking at different ways in which we can eliminate this debt quickly, and I have found a few different methods or theories. (more…)