Hello again! Today I’m going to be sharing my absolute must have tool for figuring out student loan debt repayment. I didn’t create it. Some of the really wonderful people on Reddit did, actually. But, it is absolutely invaluable and it’s completely free, no sign up required, etc. I’m not affiliated with it in any way. Just a die hard fan. Read on to see what it is and how I use it.
Parts 1 and 2 of this series talked about budgeting ideas that are applicable to everyone. Figure out where the money went and decide where it should go. But having large amounts of student loan debt throws a wrench in the works. Read on to see some quick, simple tips for budgeting when you have student loans.
Checking in with an update on my debt for March 2016. In the future, I will be including an update on our overall financial picture for the month, but because I haven’t given you that baseline post yet (coming soon!) and I haven’t told you what goals we are working on (also coming soon!), I’m going to save that for next month.
Click through to see how March went!
Continue reading
You looked at Part 1 and you wrote down where your money went for the last 30 days. Next step is simple: figure out where it should have gone. Figuring out where your money should go is the key step that most people miss when they are trying to pay down debt or start savings. Keep reading to figure out how to figure out this missing piece the budgeting puzzle!
“You should make a budget.”
If you’re like me, you’ve heard this dozens of times. And each time, it has elicited eye rolls, anxiety attacks, and just plain frustration. Sure, making a budget seems like a really simple exercise. But, for some reason of human psychology, it is always hardest to make a budget at the very moment that you most need to: when you’re facing a financial hurdle. In this series of posts, I’m going to give you some basic strategies that will make budgeting easier and way less scary. Continue reading
Last post, I wanted to discuss the “big picture” of my generation and our student loan debts. But that will not be the main focus of this blog. The main focus of this blog is going to be on my journey to repay my student loans, and I will also touch on my husband’s journey to repay his. Click through to see who we are, what we do, and just how much I owe. Continue reading
“Millennials.”
It’s almost a dirty word now. I’m not sure whether any previous generational name tag has garnered as much contempt as ours. But somewhere, the fact that I have posed that question has caused a member of another generation to roll his eyes, and mutter, “Millennials.”
In many ways, the Millennial generation is very much like previous generations. To the extent that you can generalize, as young people, we are more progressive than conservative. As were our parents and grandparents when they were young. We have seen times of economic boom, and economic bust, like our parents and grandparents did. We have watched our country struggle with the issues of racism, gender divides, immigration, abortion, politicians who don’t respond to their constituents. We still want the American dream, as did our parents and grandparents.
But, to say that there is nothing unique about the Millennial generation is to bury your head in the sand. According to the Pew Research Center, we are better educated.
We are waiting longer to get married.
But, perhaps the most important distinction, we have a lot more student loan debt.
This has lead to a lot of hostility between the generations.
(and I would have loved to start out with just five figures)
This hostility makes having a dialogue about student loan debt and the challenges that millennials face difficult. That conversation, an essential one for the economic vitality of our nation, is not one for this blog. I am not an economist, a finance wizard, or a policy maker.
I wanted to present the above statistics and the reality of the dialogue to set the stage. This blog will focus on my husband and my efforts to repay our substantial student loan debt. I want to talk with readers about budgeting, saving, refinancing, the federal repayment programs, whether to even take out a student loan in the first place. I want to give readers a picture of what living under six figure debt looks like. This post, I wanted to give a glimpse of the big picture. Next post, I will give a glimpse of the small picture. Who my husband and I are, where do we work, and just how much debt we are tackling.
Big Law, Big Debt 