4 Tips for Tackling Student Loan Debt Quicker

6 Comments

  1. I had seven separate student loans through three lenders and looked at consolidation. My highest interest rate was 6.8% (the federal loans), and the best consolidation rate I was offered was 9%. While having one payment would’ve been nice, it would’ve made zero sense. I set up auto-debit and have interest rates below 3% on my two remaining loans after months of paying on time.

  2. I work a part-time job in addition to my full-time job plus live at home so I can put more money down on my student loans.

  3. Like @Robin_Daggers:disqus said, go ahead and get a jump start on paying! I’m in optometry school right now, and racking up student loans by the minute. However, my husband and I pay a little each month even though we are not yet “required” to. This often applies to the principal, directly taking some off the top of the loan. We actually have set up an auto-pay of a certain amount each month so we won’t miss an opportunity to pay on it. Every so often, we assess our finances and pay a larger sum on the principal. Also, if you are in school now, assess your budget at the beginning of each loan disbursement cycle and make sure you are taking out only the minimum necessary. This prevents building interest on loan money you really don’t need. This has been a key in taking out less than many of my classmates.

  4. I hate, hate, HATE, student loans. I was very blessed that my parents paid for my college education. However, my husband has more than $30k and we are barely making a dent! I do not want to be paying on this until we’re 70 so we are going to try to make larger payments very soon.

  5. If you’re still in school and not yet required to start repaying that debt (or if you’ve gone to grad school and your payments have been postponed) it’s a great time to make payments anyway. When I was an undergrad NOBODY told me that I could have been making payments as I went along. Fortunately I figured it out early on and even if I could only pay $10 a month I did it. As a result, I came out of college with about $5,000 less in debt than I would have overall, and much less interest over time. I was able to pay off the remainer in four years instead of ten.

  6. My husband and I decided to put my entire salary towards paying off debt and just live off of his income. We were debt free in 5 months.

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