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Six Thousand Dollars!

Six thousand dollars. Unfortunately, that is just a small fraction of the student loan debt that I currently carry, but I am taking some great positive steps. One of the steps that I am taking is to work on getting these amounts paid off by figuring out (one bill at a time) where I can put them to reduce the amount of interest I am paying and therefore improve my overall progress toward paying them off in total as I make each monthly payment. Interest is a huge killer for me, especially on this one loan. It was up near 8.5% because of the variable interest rate. the problem, of course is that The Student Loan Corporation (STU) was moving my interest rate around. And I really wish that they (along with other student loan lenders) were more up front about the amount of money that I was wasting in interest and how long I would have to be paying off the loan.

Learning my lesson was not easy but I have learned it. Thankfully, I have nice credit and get offers from other credit card companies fairly frequently. However, recently, I got an offer from chase, where I currently already had a card with a large enough limit to cover the loan so I decided to transfer to the credit card at zero percent interest. Now I am in the process of paying off that loan (likely this weekend) and also paying down the new credit card debt. Even though the credit card debt will become regular debt after several months, I will likely have a significant sum paid off by then and if not, I can transfer to another zero percent offer at that time.

Not Charging Another Penny

To preserve my credit, I really wanted to keep this process to accounts that I am currently using so I don't open new accounts. However, if that is not possible, I will simply take the small hit and open a new card at zero percent. I think that is a totally reasonable thing to do. By the time I start the new year, I will have only a little more than 6000 dollars of debt on this loan and by the time it gets off the zero percent, I hope to have at least 1000 dollars more of the debt paid off.

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Anonymous said…
There are a lot of ways to save on your loans. I sounds like you have a good start.
10:24 AM
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