Eck…I finally have to start paying my student loans
Well I’ve been out of college completely now for over two years, but the student loan people just finally figured that out. I graduated with my MBA in Dec of 2004, but for whatever reason the student loan company thought I was still a full-time student. Which was nice because all of my student loans were being deferred and the government was still paying the interest on the subsidized loans. Well I got the bad news today that they figured out that I am no longer a student and will have to start making payments come next August.
I have about $50,000 in student loans, that is an accumulation of my under grad loans, my wife’s under grad loans, and my graduate loans. I consolidated them all together a couple years ago when rates were at their lowest, so I was pretty excited about putting off even starting payments until as as long as possible.
I have all of this student loan money locked in at 2.82%, plus once I actually sign up for electronic payments I get another .25% knocked off my rate, plus once I make payments for 12 consecutive months I get another .25% knocked off. So in reality I’m sitting with $50k of loans at 2.32% on which the interest is tax-deductible. Needless to say I signed up for the absolute slowest repayment plan possible. I think I was able to stretch payments out over 28 years or something like that. I was very fortunate to consolidate when I did, heck had I known I could get money this cheap I probably would have taken out a lot more and just invested it.Anyway my initial payments will be $161 a month starting next August, which means I’ll have to find roughly $2000 a year from my already existing tight budget to start paying these loans 😐