Where did the time go this Summer? That’s what I’m thinking to myself right now as I write my August student loan summary realizing that Summer has flew by this year. Here in the Northeast US it’s been a rather mild Summer compared to these past few years, and it hasn’t even hit 90 degrees here in August. Normally I think we’d have at least 5-6 days of getting to 90 degrees and at least 2-3 in a row. After the really cold Winter though, I can’t complain as the weather has been excellent on the weekends. I enjoy the heat but not the humidity, and it really hasn’t been too bad here. But let’s move on to the topic of this post now, talking about my progress on student loans for the last month of Summer.
Here are where my student loans stand after making my payments this month:
So you can see from the above that I’m now under $45,000 in total student loans, and slowly trying to get out of the $40,000’s even! If you also remember from last month, government loan 8 is now completely paid off and that’s another minimum payment eliminated which means a little bit more money towards every other loan this month and going forward.
I continued my standard payment of putting $2300 towards my loans each month, though I did it slightly different this month. I had been putting $500 towards my private loan, but this month I decided to up that to $600 because it’s my highest interest loan. I then put the remaining $1700 towards all of my government loans with the focus going towards the next highest interest loan, which is government loan 7.
That is the loan that I’m trying to pay off completely next, and it looks like I’ll be able to do that by October at the pace I’m going. After that I will probably turn my full attention towards the private loan and government loan 5, as the rest of my loans have significantly lower rates when compared to those.
Let’s see how my goal progress is going after August payments:
Main Goal: $20,000 Principal Reduction: $18,969.2 so far = 94.8%
Stretch Goal: $25,000 Principal Reduction $18,969.2 so far = 75.9%
Extra Goal: $30,000 Principal Reduction $18,969.2 so far = 63.2%
I continue to blow by main goal, and I’ll be able to pass that with next month’s payments as long as everything goes according to plan. I’m also 3/4 done with my original stretch goal and we still have 4 months to go, putting me a month ahead of schedule for that goal too.
I also added in the extra goal two months ago, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to scrape up some extra money at the end of the year when I look over my spending and budgeting to try and hit that goal too. Technically with it being august we are 66% through the year so I’m slightly behind on that goal, but I’m going to just keep moving forward and we’ll see what happens!
Image Source: from freedigitalphotos.net by tiramisustudio
You’re doing so awesome! I can’t wait for the post when you’ve met your first goal. I’m excited to see another loan gone for you too 🙂 At this rate you’ll be debt free in about a year!!
Thanks! It should be next month when I hit that goal 🙂 I definitely made that goal too low when I was initially creating it so that’s why I ended up with 3 goals, haha.
Right now it’s looking like early 2016 when I will be debt free at this rate, so about a year and a half, yeah!
You are so methodical and dedicated in your loan pay-off. It’s so admirable. Soon you will be at 50%!
Thank you so much, methodical is a good word to describe it. Sometimes I’m a little too methodical when making decisions but maybe that is why I’m an analyst. When it comes to paying back these loans I think it has been helpful.
I noticed that I’m inching closer to 50% paid off as well, will be another nice milestone.
That is some awesome progress.. Great job. Keep up the good work!
There will be good months and bad months with any debt payoff plan.
Just don’t let the bad months cause you to give up. Stick with it and you will get there!
Thank you very much, I was going through some rough months before – it felt like I wasn’t making any progress. Lately it feels like I’ve been paying off a new loan every few months which has bee nice.
I’m impressed with your progress! Very cool. If you don’t mind a word of advice, I’d consider picking one of the government loans to pay more than the minimum on, alongside the big private loan. I agree that focusing on the private loan is the best choice, given the interest rate, but since it will take a while, it might be nice to plan to knock out one of the government loans as you go, to give you the feeling of “win” without having to wait 15 months or whatever it will be until you finish off the private loan.
Good luck!
Thanks for the support 🙂 I was thinking of doing this as well and not just for getting the feeling of the “win”, which is obviously important but to also lower my minimum payments. At the rate I’m paying my loans I shouldn’t lose too much to interest in doing this at this point. Had I done it earlier on, it would have cost me a lot much. I do kind of like the idea of continuing to split payments even after this government loan is paid off though.
Wow, you are doing an amazing job! $2300 a month?! So impressive. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! It’s a lot easier to put that much towards them without rent though, I admire everyone that does both even more.