Interest

Happy Easter/Zombie Jesus Day.  My husband has duty today and I haven’t “celebrated” since I was a kid. Maybe I’ll have more chocolate than usual?  Feeling kind of glum after doing some Sallie Mae math today.

In the entire year of 2012, Sallie Mae reported they received about $10,336 in interest (according to my 1098-e form).

In 2012, I paid a total of $5541 towards my private student loans.  Of that $5541, nearly 84% of the payments, or $4634, went towards interest.  A whopping $907 went towards the principal.  I have a long road ahead of me!

If Sallie Mae received $10,335, that means the gov’t paid $5702 in interest last year.  Under the Income Based Repayment Plan, if my monthly payments do not cover the interest, the gov’t will cover interest on subsidized loans for the first three years.  I believe this will be the last year that the gov’t will cover my interest.  Under IBR, interest won’t capitalize, but it’s still a significant increase in the amount I owe, and the amount that would be forgiven in another 22 years…of which I’ll probably owe taxes on.

It’s moments like these that remind me just how royally screwed I am.  I can’t lose focus though.  I need to let this information fuel motivation to pay it all off quicker!  No way Sallie Mae is getting the 235%+ interest they expect from me!

For all the college-bound folks reading this…If there’s ever a time you learn from someone else’s mistakes, let it be now!  Borrow wisely!  Pay as you go!  Or save until you can really afford to go!  Student loans are not good debt!  Avoid it like the plague!

MONEY MONEY MONEY

My private student loans gain about $10-13 each day.  After our move is complete, I need to focus on making about $15 -20 each day, minimum!

I completed a long, boring survey yesterday that was worth over $13 in e-rewards money.  Eventually that will go towards another Upromise reward which will be put towards my student loans.  I have a current balance of $49.06 and need $60 for a $20 reward or $120 for a $50 reward.

I saw the below photo circulate on FB a lot the past few days.  The comments on this photo piss me off.  I know most of the people are either ignorant about the predatory nature of student loans or were just trolling but it’s sickening that people can be so judgmental and just downright horrible.  I know too many people who will pay 200-500% of their original principal on their student loans.  I’ve seen a lot of similar “Sallie Mae does math” posts like this on OccupyStudentDebt.com.

Math with Sallie Mae

If I made just the minimum payments on my private loans alone, Sallie Mae expects me to pay over 235% of my original principal.  This woman was probably like me and didn’t know her loans were gaining interest while she was in school.  Then that interest gets capitalized, added to your principal and for a long time you’re paying interest on that unpaid interest!  This grows your loans astronomically!  Interest is capitalized once again whenever you enter a new repayment plan and sometimes after taking a forbearance or deferment and depending on your loan terms, could capitalize quarterly or yearly.  Maybe this lady was unemployed and couldn’t make payments for a while and wracked up a bunch of late fees or was even in default.  Maybe she fell for her servicer’s lies and signed up for two years of interest-only payments like myself and my co-signer fell for!

I’ve been paying for 3 years and this is what my Sallie Mae math would look like:

Borrowed: $79,000
Paid back to date: $13,000
Still OWE: $96,000

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

It just sickens me that so many people will attack this photo without knowing how predatory these student loans are or they blame ignorant students and borrowers instead of blaming lenders like Sallie Mae for raping and pillaging our youth and young adults just starting out in life!

New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year!  May 2013 bring you good things!  What are some of your resolutions?

I got into a lazy funk during 2012 and just thinking about my giant list of resolutions for 2013 is causing me a lot of anxiety about how to approach them.  I seriously have four pages in a spiral notebook filled with goals for the new year.  A lot of them overlap in categories and the task of organizing and explaining how I’m even going to start is filling me with anxiety.  Resolutions are all about forming new and better habits so I need to make like Nike and just do it!

Improving time management (lose procrastination) is one key resolution.  I need to develop some sort of routine, where I spend less time on the computer and more time working to pay off my debts, volunteering, creating art, exercising regularly, develop a cleaning schedule (once we move) and even have a sleeping schedule with a bedtime routine.  With a routine in place, I will be more productive, get regular exercise, meal plan, cook more and overall eat and be healthier.  Hopefully by volunteering, working, and taking zumba classes, I will meet some people in this area and make friends so I can get out and do some fun things in 2013.

Finding passion in art is another key resolution.  I need to somehow separate the anxiety/indebtedness that I have come to associate it with.  I need to learn to lose the anxiety altogether.  I mentioned anxiety about dealing with my resolutions.  Change is difficult and difficult things cause me anxiety.  It shall be overcome!

Some other things I want to do in 2013:

• Go to the shooting range with husband
• Visit my family
• Pay off credit card debt
• Run a mile easily
• Use my Waterpik habitually
• Develop a skin care regimen
• Read more
• Update portfolio/demo reel and design new website
• Kip training (click the link to see what a kip is)
• Sit up straight, improve posture

Those are the main things on my list.  I have a lot of little to-do list items that I’m not going to bother posting.

A friend of mine started a new blog,  The Progressive Planner, which is about achieving her goals for the new year.  She used the Wheel of Life to find areas that need improvement or balance.  If I made my own wheel of life if it would be somewhat balanced, however it would be a tiny wheel.  I’m not happy with a lot of those categories.  Spirituality would probably be the highest because I’m content with my current beliefs.  Lots of improvement needed in the other areas (home environment, career, finances, health, personal, relationships, and knowledge).

One thing I didn’t take into consideration about my debt payoff is that my student loans gain about $350 in interest each month.  Since I’ve been paying more than the minimum, my loans will only accrue $290 in interest this month.  I just paid $300 for the first half of the month, so a whopping $10 more went towards that overall payoff.  Feel like I’m getting nowhere, fast!