Yesterday was magical! I highly suggest making your last debt payment on your birthday! Here’s a brief history of my student loan debt. . I graduated college in May 2005 with about $40,000 in student loans. Thankfully I was an RA my last two years of college which saved me taking out another $20K. I went right to grad school (which was free 🙌), so I was able to defer my loans for 2 years. I had loans with Sallie Mae (now Navient) and Great Lakes. . My Sallie Mae loan repayment total was $17,171.62 ($20,644.44 with interest). I made my first payment on July 2007. My monthly payment from July 2007-December 2012 was $119.55/mo which was the minimum payment at the time. In 2012 I started a new job and had some more money. So in January 2013, I DOUBLED my payments to $240/mo, but that only lasted through July 2013. #tooaggressive . I split the difference and from August 2013 - March 2016 I paid $180/mo. Not sure what happened next with my repayment, but by April 2016 I was only paying $72/mo. This was fine by me because we were gearing up to get a house which would later lead to home renovation loan debt (that we paid off in Feb 2020). . I paid $72/month until April 2020. However I did randomly pay an extra payment in Oct 2019 of $140, but I don’t recall why. While spending less money in quarantine and postponing my wedding to 2021, I started crunch numbers and realized I could push to pay off my loan by August 2020. I kept my $72/mo auto pay going, but added in more payments. . May 2020 = $294 June 2020 = $455 July 2020 = $300 Aug 2020 = $459 . That’s only half the story, but it’s a good one because I actually cannot find a digital paper trail of my Great Lakes loan. At some point a few years into loan repayment, my Grandmother paid one loan off for each of her 4 granddaughters. My Great Lakes loan had been about $25,000 so my monthly payment was to the tune of ~$300 month. This loan was paid off around 2013 - when my youngest cousin graduated college and this aligns with when I doubled my Sallie Mae payments. . In this moment I am debt free. No student loans, no car loans, no credit card debt, not even 0% interest in furniture debt. And the mortgage is only in my fiancé’s name for now! https://www.instagram.com/p/CDhCYPNBz5n/?igshid=1kekmkshgi6p2
