Six Ways to Pay Off Your Student Loans Faster | Molly's Money

10 Comments

  1. You could add to the list that if you happen to work in education federal student loans will be forgiven up to $17,500 if you work in a low income school with special education students for 5 full years. Also, teaching abroad in an Asian country is a great way to pay off debt as your housing is paid for and living costs are super low! 🙂

  2. We actually refinanced our then condo and took out the extra money to pay off my student loans and car because the mortgage rate was WAY lower than my student loans and car loan, crazy right? But totally agree with all that you said to pay off the debt!

  3. Love those ideas!! I’ve used almost all of them to pay off 100k 🙂 Another idea that I used is entrepreneurial endeavors 🙂 My husband traveled and played bass (like guitar), we wrote a book together, and used money that we received as gifts 🙂

  4. This is awesome, Molly! Great tips. I paid off almost all of my credit cards by just paying a little extra over my minimum every month…and I’m trying to contribute to paying off my husband’s loans by making my “extra job” income (aka any kind of portraits, or album income separate from my “regular” wedding jobs) solely for loan repayment.

  5. I know that once I enrolled in autopay for my student loans, it knocked down my interest percentage. It wasn’t much, but anything helps!!

  6. I pay extra per month on the loan with the highest interest rate first and minimum payments on the rest. Once the one I’m paying extra on is paid off, I move to the next highest interest rate one.

  7. Something I want to reinforce – it’s so important to know everything you can about your loan and how the bank handles things like paying more than your monthly payment.

    For example, I learned this the hard way just yesterday, if you make your monthly payment, then decide to make a second extra payment toward your loan your bank may not see that as an “extra” payment and instead may credit it toward your next monthly payment(s). If you want to pay more than your minimum monthly payment you may need to stop automatic payments so you can customize how much you pay each month based on the amount of extra money you have to pay toward your loan that month.

    OR if you want to make a second payment in addition to your monthly payment you may need to tell the bank you are making a “principal only” payment which applies that money toward the balance of your loan (excluding interest and fees) instead of rolling over to the next month’s minimum. BUT this is where my point about knowing everything you can about your loan becomes important because some banks will actually charge you a fee for making a principal only payment. Heaven forbid you pay off that loan ahead of time! If you know your bank will do that then you should stick to increasing your monthly payments and just set aside any extra money you come up with during the month until it’s time to make another payment.

    My point is just that you need to be proactive in arming yourself with the information you need to make sure you are successful in your efforts instead of hoping your loan provider will tell you everything you need to know. It sounds so basic to say it that way but sometimes I forget to ask questions and seek clarification, especially when I’m overwhelmed as I sometimes feel when dealing with finances.

  8. My husband and I have 5 college degrees between us. Needless to say, we racked up a ton of student loan debt. We completed our graduate degrees when we were married, and we lived very frugally, which helped a lot! We consolidated his loans separate from my loans (never consolidate a married couple’s loans). Then we put them both on an auto payment which was taken directly from our accounts every month. This was a huge help! Thanks for the other tips! Susan

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