After making my student loan payments for August I am definitely feeling more confident about my current status with FedLoan Servicing, even though there are past issues that still need to be resolved. I manually entered all of my loan amounts when making the payments this month and I made sure that my paid ahead status would be removed for this payment as well. I wanted all the extra money to go towards the principal and it seems like that has worked. I continue to put the bulk of my money towards my private loans, so let’s see how that went this month.
| Loan | Loan Amount | Change | Interest Rate |
| Private 1 | $ 22,634.05 | $ (1,851.32) | 7.92% |
| Private 2 | $ 19,845.23 | $ (74.26) | 7.92% |
| Private 3 | $ – | $ – | 7.92% |
| Private 4 | $ 3,476.00 | $ (30.12) | 7.35% |
| Gov 1 | $ 3,739.63 | $ (33.41) | 3.40% |
| Gov 2 | $ 3,285.00 | $ (24.66) | 6.80% |
| Gov 3 | $ 5,161.96 | $ (38.85) | 4.50% |
| Gov 4 | $ 1,982.62 | $ (27.65) | 6.80% |
| Gov 5 | $ 5,238.45 | $ (32.39) | 5.60% |
| Gov 6 | $ 2,097.12 | $ (31.92) | 6.80% |
| Gov 7 | $ 4,289.37 | $ (23.10) | 6.00% |
| Gov 8 | $ 3,297.95 | $ (24.58) | 6.80% |
| Total | $ 75,047.38 | $ (2,192.26) |
As you can see from the above table, I think I was able to make really great progress this month. I was able to decrease every single government loan this month, and see exactly how much each loan went down. I would have liked to put a little bit more towards the higher interest loans on that side compared to lower interest loans but I was playing it safe for this month. I also believe the way my minimum payments are set up it might a little difficult to do that in some cases.
I’m continuing with my plan of putting as much money as possible towards Private Loan 1 as well as slowing chipping away at the other two loans. I put $2,500 in total towards my loans this month, so even though I spent in slight excess of my total budget in July by about $250 I felt confident doing extra this month. I came in very under budget in May and June so I’m making up for that here.
I figure if I continue to make payments around this rate I should be able to pay off Private Loan 1 in about a year. That does sound like a long time – but my debt will actually be under $50,000 by then! I also think that once that happens things will start to happen quickly with my other loans and I will see some real visible progress. Right now I have to just keep slowing chipping away in my head – knowing that the big moral “victories” will come eventually.
Photo Credit: kenteegardin via photopin cc
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