64k in principal + only God knows in interest and I am debt free 7.5 years later! Student Loans |
- 64k in principal + only God knows in interest and I am debt free 7.5 years later!
- New loan shows up 9 years later? (x-post to r/personalfinance and r/legaladvice)
- Paid off my $27K private loan in ten months!
- Has anyone had their loans discharged due to being declared "totally and permanently disabled"?
- Need advice for paying for college!
- Westwood College Borrower Defense to Loan Repayment Forgiveness
- Parent Plus Loan Now or After July 1st
- I need help with the PLUS Loan ASAP!
- confused on student loans
- Advice for moving out with student loans
- Personal loans- Academic Study of Borrower Experiences with Online Lenders
- International Students and Loans
- Planning to marry, will it affect my financial aid?
- Discover student loans review?
- Student Loan refinance
- Funds applied to different loans in the same group (Nelnet) depending on manual vs auto-debit
- Confused first-gen student, what are my options if I can't pay for school?
- Questions from a 2nd bachelor’s student
- 100k student loan worth it?
| 64k in principal + only God knows in interest and I am debt free 7.5 years later! Posted: 11 Jun 2020 05:07 PM PDT There were many times this debt had me feeling down and stressed, but I finally made it. I just wanted to share some things I did that I think will help others: 1) Make a budget!!!! 2) Job hop and do not stay loyal to an employer. Job hopping is the fastest way to increase income. 3) Buy store brand groceries, coupon and meal prep. 4) Drive beater cars (freaking drove a car without heat and another without air) 5) Limit eating and drinking out 6) Buy things used on Craiglist or ask for things you need in your local Facebook Buy Nothing Project for free. This is good for gym equipment to help cancel any gym memberships. 7) Use several credit cards to maximize cash back, but pay balance off EVERY month 8) Pay for cheap internet (still on 30 mbps) and no cable 9) Refinance for a lower rate 10) Pay above the minimum 11) Traveled for any vacation within bus distance 12) Sell unused items 13) Use cash back apps 14) Live with parents if possible (I had a child and bought a house after graduation, still dont know how I got a mortgage at that time). 15) Shop insurance rates yearly 16) Skip the expensive cell phones and go with an affordable carrier 17) Use Youtube to help with home and car maintenance 18) Take up a part time job 19) Conserve utility usage 20) Gave myself buzz cuts 21) Shop discount retailers and thrift shop 22) Try and not get any pets I hope this quick list helps. I will for sure add more things once I remember them. Just remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Focus on the end goal, freedom. Good luck everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| New loan shows up 9 years later? (x-post to r/personalfinance and r/legaladvice) Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:54 PM PDT I graduated from university in 2014. At the time I had 6 federal loans and 1 private loan. By 2018, all were paid off. Last week, I was sent a communication from Heartland ECSI (a real federal loan servicer) of a Perkins loan I supposedly took out in 2011 but deferred payments on until August 2020. I have no memory of this loan but it just showed up on my credit report and my NSLDS profile. Does this sound weird to anyone? Can you even defer a loan for 9 years? Is it possible someone took out a loan in my name without my knowledge? [link] [comments]  |
| Paid off my $27K private loan in ten months! Posted: 11 Jun 2020 11:11 PM PDT I got really lucky this year because I got hit with a nice tax refund, hazard pay and COVID pay bonus which totaled to an extra $9K. I was very aggressive, paying about 1.5-2K a month and then eventually deciding to pay off a lump sum in the end! I still have a federal loan I plan to pay off with a side job (no rush in that one). But feels so good to finally save all my paychecks now! [link] [comments]  |
| Has anyone had their loans discharged due to being declared "totally and permanently disabled"? Posted: 11 Jun 2020 04:37 PM PDT I was approved for SSI earlier this year for mental illness and have ~$80k in federal student loans (no private loans). I have read here: https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/disability-discharge
I don't think this is feasible for me right now due to having just switched psychiatrists (had to leave my prior practice for various reasons), and the current COVID-19 restrictions making my appointments over the phone instead of in-person. I've been unemployed for 4 years now (it takes a long time to get approved for SSI), and have shown no improvement in my condition despite medications, therapy, TMS, and even two psychiatric hospital stays. So I am hoping that if I can stay on good terms with this doctor, when the COVID-19 restrictions are finally lifted, and he sees that I don't improve after a year or so, he might be willing to sign this paperwork. I wanted to know if anyone has gone through this process, and what their experience was. This is essentially my only hope of getting rid of these loans in my lifetime, unless my condition somehow improves and I'm also able to find a job in my field (master's degree in engineering). The former I am doubtful of as I've suffered from mental illness for over a decade and if anything it has been getting worse over the years, and the latter due to my long gap in work history (there's a three-year postdischarge monitoring period in which you aren't allowed to have income above the poverty line, which would bring my gap to a minimum of 7 years) and lack of experience (1.5 years). My disability attorney said he's never had any clients go through this process, so I'm asking here. [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice for paying for college! Posted: 12 Jun 2020 12:11 AM PDT I posted this on r/applyingtocollege, wanted to get some more answers. I'm going to college in the fall and parents are completely clueless as what to do. They have made it very clear that they don't want to take out a loan for me, but would cosign. However, my parents have a decent income, so I don't qualify for much aid; the only federal loan I qualify for is the Direct Unsubsidized loan ($5500/yr), and I am hesitant to take this out because the interest accrues while I am in school. My cost of attendance minus aid is about 21k/yr. (If I take the unsubsidized loan it is 16k/yr). I don't know how I should pay for this. My offer says that I am eligible for 20k through the Federal Direct Loan, but my parents would have to take that out, and again, they don't want to pay for it. Any advice is appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Westwood College Borrower Defense to Loan Repayment Forgiveness Posted: 11 Jun 2020 09:42 PM PDT Hi, I am Jackie. After reading a lot of articles online about this I decided I will try to apply. I did read they lost a settlement already a couple of years ago but I have nothing to attach to my application. Asking to see if any one has welcome packets or something they can share with me if they applied. I attended from 2010-2012 and originally was going for a Bachelors degree and was told I had to walk away with associates degree or nothing when they closed. I should have walked away with nothing since now I'm stuck with $37K worth of loans and I already paid off more than 10K so far. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Parent Plus Loan Now or After July 1st Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:48 PM PDT Applying for 1st time for a Parent Plus loan for our student. Read a little about the interest rate on these loans is going to be dropping quite a bit after July 1st. https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/12/federal-student-loan-interest-rates-drop-to-historic-low/ Wondering if I apply now or wait until after July 1st to get the lower rate. We are anxious to get this figured out quickly but dont want to pay 3% more on a considerable loan amount. [link] [comments]  |
| I need help with the PLUS Loan ASAP! Posted: 11 Jun 2020 08:28 PM PDT Hello, I'm going to be a freshman in college next year, and I'm just now hearing about this thing called the PLUS Loan. I don't think that my parents will be able to pay for the upcoming academic year without financial aid. I'm really worried that I may have missed the deadline for the PLUS Loan, as it says on my college's website that it is available to file for both the Fall and Spring term in April, and is due on the 30th... Which is long past. :( Any and all help would be very much appreciated!! Thank you so much in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jun 2020 08:11 PM PDT Hello. I am somewhat confused about what student loans may be the best for me. Thankfully I am transferring and saved quite a bit of money already. However, I'm having I'm overwhelmed with paying for my new school. It would about 30k for the next two years. I'm in the middle class so naturally, my parents make too much for me to receive grants and scholarships. I qualify for an unsub loan as well as a parent plus loan, but what would be the best move to make? At what point should I move to look into private loans? Also, what are some good sites for scholarships? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice for moving out with student loans Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:03 PM PDT So I'm in the process of getting my finances together to move out and I'm not sure what to do with my student loans. I'm stubborn to pay it off but I'm also not sure of what would be my best option. Right now I pay $485.64 a month and I have $28,861.72 left to pay overall with little interest. I've thought about refinancing them before but I think that would increase my interest. I'm looking into different options right now because it's my largest monthly bill. Has anyone else refinanced or switched payment plans? How much of an interest does it increase? I'm up for suggestions! Thank you!! [link] [comments]  |
| Personal loans- Academic Study of Borrower Experiences with Online Lenders Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:02 PM PDT Hi everyone, My name is Michael McCanless and I am an academic researcher studying online personal loans. These loans are often used to refinance student debt, so I wanted to reach out to the r/studentloans community and include that perspective within my study. A bit more info about the work… I am hoping to speak with 20-25 users of online loans to understand how funds acquired from online lenders are put to use in managing borrowers' finances. I will ask questions about how credit influenced your decision making, how you interacted with the website before and after taking the loan, and why online lending made sense for you. This interview will last approximately 30-60 minutes and I will be paying participants $25 for their time. If anyone has experience with online lenders and is interested in participating, I am attaching a link with a short contact survey. Fill this out and I will reach out to you at the email/phone # provided: https://michaelmccanless.github.io/DigitalLendingProject/ Here is more information from my University of Kentucky landing page… feel free to ask for more information if you have any questions or concerns as I know randomly reaching out over reddit can make some uncomfortable. https://geography.as.uky.edu/users/mjmc273 Thanks for your time [link] [comments]  |
| International Students and Loans Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:24 PM PDT I'm planning on going to law school in the US but I have no idea how I'm going to pay for $50k+ per academic year. I'm going to apply for scholarships and plan to work part time. However, I'm pretty sure these alone won't be enough to cover my tuition and fees as well as my living expenses. I've looked at options on applying for private loans as an international student (IS) to help pay for costs since IS aren't eligible for FAFSA. I'm a bit hesitant to incur debt in the US since I'm not from there. Some of my concerns include: What private establishments provide "the best" options for loans for IS? What are the average interest rates when taking out student loans (around 30k+ per academic year for 4 years max) Do IS get higher interest rates or is it generally the same? Any info will be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Planning to marry, will it affect my financial aid? Posted: 11 Jun 2020 11:18 AM PDT I am an 18yr old student who is going to attend University of Southern California. I have already been accepted and am under my parents' FAFSA for the 2020-21 school year. My family is very low income and we received amazing financial aid from the school. I am planning to get married before school starts (in about a month or two). My biggest worry is that this will affect my financial aid. I know I have the possibility to be listed as independent student and that would change my financia aid, but I am afraid that it would be more expensive or I would be required to take out more loans. In my situation, my (future) husband would work and be the main source of income, while I intend to be a "full-time student" and possibly work in college. This would make our income very low. If anyone knows about this and could give me some advice I would appreciate it a lot. [link] [comments]  |
| Discover student loans review? Posted: 11 Jun 2020 10:42 AM PDT Any positive/negative reviews about Discover? If you have a different recommendation, what is it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:03 PM PDT My wife has close to 80k in student loan. Right now I think all the loans are between 6-7% and at different terms. Thinking of getting a pvt loan to consolidate and maybe get a better rate than now (maybe after Sept 2020). Both of us have 800+ credit. However, my wife works part-time gigs so I will be the one co-signing a loan. What will be the impacts on our credit score if we seek pvt consolidation and refi? What are the typical loan terms (no of years ) offered? We are trying to get the lowest mo payments, so we can rapidly pay off the principal. Thanks for any info you can provide. [link] [comments]  |
| Funds applied to different loans in the same group (Nelnet) depending on manual vs auto-debit Posted: 11 Jun 2020 06:47 AM PDT TLDR: Funds are applied to Loan 1 and interest accrues on Loan 2 when payments are scheduled through auto-debit. Funds are applied to the outstanding interest on Loan 2 when payments are manually scheduled, thus no funds are applied to Loan 1. Why is this happening? Breakdown of loans for context - Loan group G total balance: $28,924 principal; $967 interest
I have auto-debit set up for a little over $200 a month, and occasionally pay an extra $100-$300 via "manual" payments if I have some extra wiggle room in my budget for the month. The auto-debits are currently paused and interest rate is 0% due to CARES. The loans normally have the same interest rate of 5.75%. When my auto-debit runs, it applies the full payment to Loan 1. As normal, it applies to interest first and then the remainder goes to the principal; normally this is ~$70 interest and ~$130 principal. This causes interest to accrue on Loan 2 (~$60/month). However, when I schedule payments manually, the entire payment goes to the interest that has been accruing on Loan 2 and none of it goes to principal of Loan 1 or 2. I noticed this happening quite some time ago, but didn't really do anything about it because my auto-debit was still happening and I was just applying my extras to some lower interest loans in a different group - problem solved. Well, right now I would really like to take advantage of the zero interest and that has prompted me to figure out what is going on and which method of allocation is financially advantageous to me. I think I prefer the way auto-debit is applying loans because it allows me to pay more of the principal of the loan group, and the interest itself of Loan 2 is not gaining additional interest (essentially a 0% rate on this debt), but maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. I have messaged Nelnet support, but they have given me crappy generic responses that don't actually fit my question so it looks like I will need to call them. I plan to do that today or tomorrow depending on how busy work is. In the mean time, does any one have experience or thoughts on what may be happening here? I'm just confused at why my payments would be applied differently depending on the method of scheduling (auto vs manual). [link] [comments]  |
| Confused first-gen student, what are my options if I can't pay for school? Posted: 11 Jun 2020 12:27 PM PDT Hi everyone! I went to community college straight out of high school because I couldn't afford college. I'm first-generation, and my parents make too much for federal grants but are in a lot of debt, so they are broke and did not save any money because they thought that I would get a full ride to school somehow. Luckily I got a tuition-paid state scholarship to cc. I only had to pay about 6k for my Associate's in comp sci and I have no debt. I will also have 8k saved up by the end of the summer. I did this by working 2 low-wage jobs while I did classes since I don't qualify for work-study. I'm choosing between two colleges to transfer to now. All numbers are net costs, before my state cc scholarship is applied (2.5k per year for 2 years): School 1: ~45k total over 5 semesters. Tuition and fees are about 17.5k per year, plus ~$100/month for the bus. I would commute here for about an hour and a half one way. My time at this school will mainly be spent taking humanities reqs, which is unfortunate considering it's the state tech school. I will also graduate late yes or yes, and I might need up to 6 semesters to finish everything. The 3rd year will not be eligible for my scholarship. School 2: ~45-50k over 4 semesters, with dorming. I could commute here too, but it'd be a 2 hour commute by bus/train one way. So I'll probably dorm so that I don't put my grades at risk. This school is the flagship state school so it's slightly more prestigous and resourceful. It's also slightly cheaper at 16k/year in tuition and fees. I will spend my last two years here taking only comp sci classes. I'll graduate on time too. I only got 6.5k/year in federal loans. I'm thinking of appealing for more, but I'm not sure if that'll work. School 2 also offers more scholarship opportunities for transfers, but because of its size they are quite competitive. School 1 does not give transfers any grants or scholarships. I can definitely keep one of my jobs since I do it from home, but I will have to give up my retail job to focus on school now that my commute will be so long. Still, even if I saved 100% of my salary between both jobs, I wouldn't make enough to completely pay for either school or cover my EFC. My parents will not help me and I'm not sure if they will cosign on state loans for me. They seem to want me to skip a Bachelor's entirely, stay home and just enter the workforce, but pickings are slim in CS with just an Associate's. I really don't want to be stuck working retail for min wage. I want to improve my prospects in life so I'm very hesitant to give up now. I have a good credit score but my income will probably be an issue for private loans. Is it even worth finishing college in my circumstances? Should I listen to my parents and head right into the work force? I feel stuck. I chose cc so that I wouldn't be spending so much on school, but it's expensive anyways. Not as expensive as staying for 4 years, and not as expensive as private school, but still unreasonable. It seems that even 20k worth of debt can be super debilitating, so I'm afraid to take double of that. I don't know if any of this is a good idea. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Questions from a 2nd bachelor’s student Posted: 11 Jun 2020 08:17 AM PDT I am a 24 year old second bachelor's student heading into my final year of nursing school. My university is (shockingly) not being forward with financial aid award information, leaving me staring at a deadline for payments I don't even know if I will need to make. They told me that my FAFSA was "ready to award" but that they hit a "red flag" regarding my loan limits. They seem to be confused about what my loan limits are since I turned 24 while in the middle of my second degree. Here are my loan totals: 1st degree (7 semesters): $25,292 -completed degree within 3.5 years 2nd degree (6 semesters): $7,500 -will be completed within 3 years, began in 2018 -first academic year financed by federal loans -second academic year paid out of pocket, denied loans d/t hitting the dependent undergrad loan limit -currently entering my final year, turned 24 last month and am officially considered FAFSA independent The question here is whether I'm still limited to the dependent undergraduate limit of $31,000 or if I've been expanded to the independent undergraduate limit of $57,500. Subsidized vs. unsubsidized is not an issue, as majority if my loan debt is unsubsidized anyways. Any help would be appreciated, bonus points if you can provide where you got your info from so I have some sources for backup! Will cross post on r/financialaid as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jun 2020 07:42 AM PDT I'm from a middle-class family in a third world country. That being said, my family's entire asset is around 150k with a yearly income of around 15k. Is an engineering degree abroad in North-America worth a 100k student loan? This university is what I once considered, one of my "dream schools," with internship opportunities and post-graduation work permit, but I'm beginning to see why "dream school" is a vague term. (I've major depressive disorder, is that relevant cuz I tend to run away from what stresses me out? What if I fail to set up a career? It's all stressing me out already) [link] [comments]  |
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