On Student Loans, Via A New York Times Editorial

A friend on Facebook posted a link to the following New York Times article today.  It’s a fascinating editorial piece on student loans, so I thought that I’d repost the first few paragraphs here.

Better Disclosure for Private Loans

About two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients borrow to complete their educations. The fortunate among them rely on federal loans that offer a low, fixed-interest rate and broad consumer protections that allow them to defer payments — and stay out of default — if they lose their jobs. But many students have been roped into costlier private student loans that have variable interest rates and few consumer protections.

This means that borrowers who fall on hard times have few options other than default, which can make it more difficult for them to obtain credit, find jobs or rent apartments.

A new study issued jointly last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education makes clear that the government, Congress in particular, can do a better job of educating families to the significant differences between private and federal loans while making sure that colleges and lenders are upfront and honest about risks.

The study’s most distressing finding is that more than 40 percent of students who borrowed privately were in fact eligible to borrow from the safer and generally less costly federal program. Those students, and the parents who co-signed for them, simply may not have known the difference between the two kinds of loans because no one told them. But because of variable interest rates, even sophisticated borrowers may not be prepared for “payment shock” when graduation rolls around and the first bill arrives in the mail.

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.  You can also read the study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education by clicking here.  Both of these links are also available in the Other Links You May Want To Click section above.

I’ve talked about this before, but I am a big proponent of personal responsibility. If you sign to take out a loan, that is your decision and you ought to own up to it.  However, there are some very deceptive practices out there, and I don’t think that every 18-year-old kid is wise enough to understand all the intricacies of signing a loan.  I certainly wasn’t.  I signed for my first student loan when I was 20 and halfway through a college degree, and it still took me quite a while to understand the seventeen pages of information that I was given by the loan company.

Student loans are invaluable ways for people to gain access to higher education, but if lenders are allowed to keep taking advantage of young adults new to the financial world, all we’re doing is setting the next generation up for a lifetime of financial failure.  Surely we can do better.

Chasing The Dream

Do you know what question I really hate?

“What do you want to do with your degree/career path/ life?”

I mean, this question was so easy when I was 5.  I wanted to marry Tigger, but I would have settled for Peter Pan.  I could have spent my days bouncing around the Hundred Acre Wood or flying over Neverland, taunting Rabbit or teasing pirates.  I could hunt heffalumps or indians, and look for a lost tail or a missing fairy.  I already had brothers, so it wouldn’t have been hard to adjust to the mostly-male cast of either world.  I had a plan, I tell you.  It was going to be perfect.

Sadly, I think I have to admit that my life probably not going to work out like that.  Apparently there is an age limit on both worlds, and I think I’m closing in on it.  Even more sadly, there is not an age limit on people asking me what I want to do with my life.

You see, I’ve made some choices in my life that would seem to indicate that I had a goal in mind when I made those choices.  I went to college, got a degree, I went to grad school, I got another degree.  For the normal person, this implies that there is a set career path in mind.

I am not a normal person.

I think the most important thing that I learned in graduate school was what I did NOT want to do.  I realized that I did not want to work as a lobbyist, a political consultant, a policy-maker, or really in anything to do with governmental politics.  I also realized that while I’m pretty darn good at biostatistics, SAS (the statistical analysis program favored by pretty much everyone, for some unknown ungodly reason) and I do not get along.  At all.  (You can ask the three school computers I accidently took out of commission for verification on this.)  Unfortunately, those were the two main things my degree focused on.

Now I have a Master’s degree that I’m probably never going to use to its full capacity.  I’m actually OK with this.  The problem is that most people don’t understand that.  There is a stigma attached to not using a degree- like the owner has failed to properly pursue their dreams.  For some, it’s out of laziness, for others it’s because of the job market.  For me, it’s because my dreams took a hard left turn somewhere between first and second year.  In any case, it’s not an easy concept to explain to people.

I’m going to try to explain this concept to people now.

I took an economics class my first semester in graduate school.  It was on Wednesday evenings, from 4-7 pm.  That’s dinner time for most people.  It was torture for the 30 or so of us trapped in that room each week.  I’m just saying- when you start trying to figure out the social cost vs the nutritional benefit of cannibalism, it’s time to get out of class.  Now, I had a wonderful professor.  She was kind, cared about her students, and tried to make the material interesting to us.  That’s a huge thing in a graduate school professor.  It wasn’t her fault that economics is the most boring subject in the entire world forever and ever and for always.

Naturally, my brain couldn’t handle this kind of self-imposed confinement for long.  Just before midterms, my mind finally snapped.  Out of the blue during lecture, a short exchange popped into my head: “And just who are the Nocturnes?”  “They’re us, obviously.”

That was the beginning of the end.  In about a month, I had written a 65,000 word novel, mostly in three-hour weekly increments.  My notebook pages were dotted with economic formulas and bits of notes that I’d jotted down when my attention wandered back to the actual class lectures, but mostly it was full of the story of a girl who sends herself away to boarding school only to find out her classmates are not exactly totally human.

I know, original idea, right?

That’s not the point here.  The point is I did what I had always wanted to do- I wrote a novel.  It was a terribly written novel, and editing so far hasn’t made it much better, but it was mine and it was complete.  I was so ridiculously proud of that thing, and honestly, I still am.  Even though it’s terrible.

Two years later, around the same time, I wrote another novel.  This one turned out much better, mainly because of all that I had learned about how not to write a novel from the first one.  The second novel is called Northgate, and I’m even more proud of it, even though it’s technically incomplete (I prefer to think of it as leaving the ending to the reader’s imagination…).

That’s not exactly the point here either.  The real point is that it took me a very long time to realize what it was that I wanted to do with my life.  This may be because it’s not a very well-accepted career move, or because I was afraid that people would belittle my dream, or most likely- that I would totally and completely fail at it.

But I remembered something that I had forgotten in the two decades since I was 5: dreams don’t have to be practical.  That’s what makes them dreams.

I also realized that now is the perfect time to really chase down my dreams- because it’s not like I have a full-time job or anything.  I actually have very few responsibilities in my life right now.  So, *deep breath,* I’m going to start giving the true answer to people when they ask me The Question.

Go ahead, ask me.  You know you want to.

You: “K, what do you want to do with your degree/ career path/ life?”

Me: “I want to be a writer.  But more than that, I want to be a creator.  I want to make things that make people feel things- books, blogs, pictures, videos, etc. (and yes, I will say etc.  Just like that: E.T.C.)  I don’t care if people remember my name, but I want them to remember the things I made.”

You: “Wow, that’s a really good answer.”

Me: “I know, it took me several years to come up with it, and a few hours to memorize the proper inflections for it when spoken.”

You:  “It was time well spent, I’d say.”

Me: “Yep. Far more useful than that second economics class.  By the way, you’re going to save $7 if you buy that game pre-owned since you have a membership card.  It’s a better economic decision… DARN IT!  The curriculum seeped into my brain anyway!”

You: “Um, ok.  Nice talking with you.” *You scurry away at this point*

This is exactly how the conversation is going to go down.  Those of you unfortunate enough to interact with me in real-life know I’m telling the truth.  I’m sorry, but it is what it is.  And you know what? People may not remember my name, but they do remember that strange redheaded girl who works at the video game store and has that eloquently-phrased dream, and that’s what it’s all about in the end.

space

Right?

The underlying message here: you may grow out of a dream, but your dreams should always outgrow you.

My Brain and I

Have you ever had that feeling, like there’s some major ephineny brewing in the back of your mind?  It’s like there’s this cloud of understanding just behind your eyes, biding its time.  I don’t know if it was last weekend’s Supermoon, the reactions to Thursday’s “Why You Can’t Pay For Me,” something that I’m reading, the fact that I’m writing on my book again, or the intuition that I seem to have inherited from my mother (and which terrifies me when it’s right), but I’ve been feeling like this for several days now.

And it’s really starting to bug me, you know?

I mean, my brain and I have been at odds with each other since I was 8, and it suddenly decided that the world needed to be counted and alphabetized.  We’ve reached an uneasy truce in the last two years, in which I will not feed my body wheat and my brain will not keep me awake at night, but sometimes that peace doesn’t hold.

OCD is like my own personal alarm system- alerting me to something stressful in my life that I need to deal with.  It’s hard to miss when you realize you know exactly how many letters and words (and punctuation marks and spaces) are on a page, but you have no idea what any of it actually said.  The inability to sleep or sit still are pretty good hints too.  When I start wondering if I have any Xanax left, I know things are bad.

For the record, I don’t take medication for my OCD.  I have tried it.  I took Lexapro, an anti-anxiety drug, for four years in college.  It did absolutely nothing.  Xanax didn’t work either- it just put me into a restless sleep for a few hours at a time.  I still counted, I still did the same things over and over, and I still don’t quite know how I made it to graduation.  I learned how to cope, and even how to tell my brain to stop to a certain extent, but I never really got it all to shut off.  It was only after I went gluten-free in grad school that I saw a major difference.  I felt better, so I slept better, so I had far less exhaustion-related anxiety.  I could tell my brain to stop, and it’d actually listen.  I felt in control of my own brain for the first time, and it was wonderful.

Now when I feel the anxiety creeping back in, and I find myself counting or alphabetizing the words on a page, it terrifies me.  I’m afraid of slipping back into that world of uncertainty, scared that I won’t be able to find my way back out of it.  I hated being on medication- having to make sure I had my pills with me if I was traveling, having to report it to judgmental doctors at the college clinic, having to sit in the therapist’s waiting room for a refill and feeling the eyes of others on me as they tried to figure out what was wrong with me, and having roommates that would ask me if I’d taken my meds every time I did something out of the ordinary.  I’d try to laugh it all off, but I hated every minute of every day, knowing that all that stood between me and a full-fledged panic attack was a tiny blue pill.

Oh, and it didn’t stop the panic attacks either.  I still had those, in the form of night terrors.  I’d wake up, panicked and unsure of my surroundings, paralyzed with an unknown fear, unable to catch my breath or reach my bottle of pills.  I’d be afraid to fall asleep for nights afterward, which only made my anxiety worse.

I work hard every day to keep myself from sliding back into that dark world of anxiety and irrational fear.  I keep busy so my brain never has idle time to think up new concerns.  I’ve learned how to cope with sudden changes, and how to be more proactive.  I keep up on the latest theories and treatments of OCD, and I read every single ingredient label on everything I eat.  It all keeps my OCD in check, and I don’t need to remember to take a pill every day to do it.  Every day that I go without melting down or feeling like I’m losing control is a victory, and some days it’s a hard-fought victory.

You’re probably wondering why I’m revealing all of this on so public of a forum.  After all, most of this is stuff I’ve never told to anyone else.  But a good friend, after reading Thursday’s blog post, asked me if maybe I should consider friendships as a type of job.  They take just as much regular time and effort, and the payout is being surrounded by people who care about you.  It was a very interesting thought, and it came right on the heels of another interesting conversation.

Two of my friends on Twitter and I had just discussed social anxiety and how the internet can provide a safe place to learn how to make friends (note- I said “can,” not “does.”  The Internet isn’t all sunshine and dandelions, I know this).  One Twitter friend was shocked to find out that another Twitter friend and I both struggled with real life interactions, but had grown more comfortable with real people since joining Twitter or other social network sites.  The truth is, I’ve always felt more at home on the internet, like I’m more accepted here than in real life.  It might seem backwards, and probably has a lot to do with being a part of Generation Y, but there it is.  Internet: you’re my kind of people.

So there you have it.  The story of my war with my brain, all laid out in a nice even number of words (WordPress provides that- I swear).  I hope this helps you understand a little bit more about me, why I don’t mind working five jobs, why I have to force myself to make friends with corporeal people, why I over think everything, why I don’t eat anything with gluten, and why my monthly budget is an Excel spreadsheet with seven tabs and five color-coded and cross-referenced data tables.  (Don’t believe me?  Behold.)

OCD- you can’t make this kind of crazy up.

The green is my ideal budget, where everything is paid according to my maximum monthly income.  The red is my monthly budget prioritized in order of importance, the yellow is my income tracking, the purple is a copy of the red, the orange is which account each amount goes into, and the gray is my savings ledger.  I have copies of monthly budgets back to January, a tab for proposed budgets as my income (hopefully, eventually) grows, and a tab for contingencies (ie- huge financial events, emergency funds, etc).  This document is where my OCD gets free reign.  I’d probably have more color-coded tables, but the MS Excel color palette is a bit lacking.  In any case, you get the point (and a free look at my finances).  Sometimes, you have to find ways to let the crazy out so the pressure doesn’t make you explode.

space

Huh, turns out there was an epiphany in there after all.

On Obama’s Student Loan Reform

President Obama said something awesome yesterday.  No, I’m not talking about his slow jamming the news on Jimmy Fallon last night, although if you haven’t seen it, click that link and watch.  Whether you like Obama or not- that is a funny video.

I am referring to the fact that President Obama, while speaking to university students yesterday, said “…check this out, all right, I’m the President of the United States—[I] only finished paying off [my] student loans about eight years ago.”

Let’s pause for a moment and do some quick math.

President Obama graduated with his J.D. in 1991 (thanks, Wikipedia).  That’s twenty-one years ago.  He says that he finished paying off his loans eight years ago.  That means our President, who spent 7 years as a State Senator and 3 as a US Senator (and I think we can all agree those are not minimum-wage type jobs), took THIRTEEN YEARS to pay off his student loans.

Thirteen years, people.  That’s a long time to be stuck owing someone money, especially when that someone is a faceless company with an army of lawyers and form letters at their disposal.

Anyway, after I heard President Obama’s speech, I wanted to know how much his student loans had totaled.  As that’s not a sum that Google easily spits out, I did some quick research and came up with some numbers of my own.

• President Obama spent two years at Harvard Law School.  At roughly $14,500 per semester in 1990, President Obama would have paid $58,000 in tuition.  Add in standard university fees, and President Obama’s Law degree from Harvard in 1991 likely cost about the same as my Public Health degree from Emory in 2011- $60,000.

• Before that, President Obama spent four years at Columbia University.  In the 1980s, the average yearly tuition at a four-year private school was just over $8,100 (thanks again, Wikipedia).  Since we’re talking about Columbia here, let’s bump that up to an even $9,000 per year.  That’s $36,000 over four years.

• If President Obama only used loans to pay his tuition and fees at both schools, he would have graduated with a debt total close to $100,000.  Stretched out over 13 years and assuming an average fixed interest rate of 9% (this number comes from here) equals a monthly payment of about $1,089, or a grand total of $169,884.

You know what?  I’m starting to see why President Obama has spent so much time talking about student loan reform.  I’ve only spent two years paying on my student loans, and I talk about them and the need for reform all the time too. (The difference here is that only a few hundred people listen to me.  The similarity is that Congress doesn’t listen to me either.)

The big issue right now is the student loan interest program.  If it expires in July, the average student will pay $1,000 more on their loans in pure interest.  For those who are struggling just to make the minimum payment each month, this could put them dangerously close to defaulting on their loans.  President Obama is urging Congress to not let this program expire.  This is one of those times when even through my congressman can be an elitist … (well, it rhymes with stick), I’m still going to pick up the phone and send an email asking him to vote to extend the program.

Perhaps you could do the same? (Call your congressperson, I mean.  Don’t call mine unless you have to- he’s not a very nice person.)

If you want to know more about the issue, here are some links:

• http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/24/11374977-the-problem-with-boehners-logic?lite

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/obama-romney-seek-to-stop-doubling-of-student-loan-interest-rate/2012/04/24/gIQAlX4VfT_story.html

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/student-loans-interest-rate_n_1450634.html

While you all read and discuss, or do whatever it is you do on the internet, I’m going to set a new goal for myself: pay off my student loans faster than the President.

Two years down, eleven to go.

There’s Always A Key

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that there is always a key.

When I was a kid and I went to visit my grandmother’s house, I would spend hours playing Chip’s Challenge on her state-of-the-art Compaq desktop PC.

16-bit video games: teaching kids about unrealistic physics since 1989.

I never got past level 30.

But you know what?  I learned a thing or two about finding the key.  Finding the key was everything in that game- the keys opened the doors, which let you collect the chips, which let you open the portal, which let you progress to the next level of Melinda the Mental Marvel’s Clubhouse.  What’s more, you had to find the keys in the right order.  Opening the green door before the red door could mean you’d never see the other side of the blue door.

As I got older (and computers came with better pre-loaded games), I moved on from Chip’s Challenge.  I started collecting my own set of real-life keys- the house key in 4th grade, the golf cart key when I turned 14, the all-important car key when I turned 16, and the dorm room key and mailbox key when I hit college.  Each key signified a rite of passage- a sign that I was being recognized with some new responsibility.  Just like in Chip’s Challenge, I had to earn them in the right order.

It turns out that I’m still collecting those keys.  Over the years, I’ve had two golf cart keys, three car keys, four dorm room keys, two mailbox keys, a bike lock key, a school swimming pool key, numerous filing cabinet keys, keys to the houses of families that I’ve nannied for, keys to neighbors’ houses, keys to my own house, keys to houses that I can no longer identify, keys to two separate churches, and for some mysterious reason a key to a steamer trunk that does not open any such trunk in my house.  (I chose to believe that this key in fact opens the trunk from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but that’s a different story.)

Each key given to me has been a sign of trust- trust that I will not total a car, deface a dorm room, use my school mailbox to send/receive illegal items, fill the school pool with Jell-O, “borrow” the church’s crayons for my personal use, rearrange the contents of a filing cabinet in accordance with the Klingon or Elvish alphabets, or most importantly that I will not allow any harm to come to the children (and houses) that have been left in my care.  I am proud to say that I’ve only failed in one of those things. (I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which one, but a hint- it wasn’t the children… or the houses.)

Yesterday I received a set of new keys (six, to be exact), and with them a lot of new responsibility.  I was given keys to the store at which I work part-time.  I now have the responsibility of shift manager, and can open and close the store by myself.  Added to the three physical keys and numerous virtual keys that I have for my other jobs, and you could say that my inventory has reached maximum capacity.

You know it's bad when your computer not only starts talking to you in metaphors, but in perfectly-timed metaphors.

Here’s the thing.

I’m not sure I want all those keys.

Having these new keys means that I’m eligible to work more hours at the retail job.  Since a full-time coworker just left, there are now 40 extra hours per week on the schedule.  For anyone else, this would be a good thing.  More hours up for grabs plus shift management capability means more shifts.  More shifts mean more money.

For me, more shifts just mean more time constraints as I try to juggle five jobs.

Four of those jobs are things that I can see myself doing for a long time.

Three of those jobs have the ability to become full-time jobs.

Two of those jobs make me truly happy at the end of the day.

One of those jobs has just received a renewed commitment from me to work my maximum allotted hours each week in hopes that it might become a full-time job (or at least get another major contract extension) at some point in the future.

There are still just 24 hours in the day.

You see the problem here, right?

The worst part is the uncertainty of it all.  What will happen if I leave one job and the other jobs can’t pick up the slack?  What happens six months down the road if the stars don’t align and no contract is offered and I’m left with no job at all?  Even if I don’t intentionally leave a job behind, I’m still left with questions.  What if I make a mistake and get fired?  What if the store closes due to poor sales?  What happens when the children I care for go to elementary school in the Fall?  What if budget concerns cut my monthly stipend?  What if  the new project/ fifth job that I’m so excited about falls through and I am left with nothing to show for all my efforts?

I think that all this work-related anxiety  is a common problem for my generation- we no longer live in a time where people will stay with the same company for 50 years.  Businesses fold, jobs change, dreams shift, and entire careers take sudden left turns.  We aren’t offered the same job security that we watched our parents live with, and it terrifies the living hell out of us.

I know that there’s a key hidden here somewhere.  There’s a solution to all of this, and I think I may already know what it is.  The hardest part is that this is real life.  There’s no password that will let me skip this level.  If I chose the wrong door, I can’t hit control+R and restart.  If I use the wrong key, it won’t come back to me.  And there is certainly no video walk-though on YouTube.  (Believe me, I’ve checked.)

So while I continue to write pro and con lists, sketch time management pie graphs, stare blankly at an electronic calendar, and just generally pray for either some clear guidance or a meteor to throw off the planet’s rotation just enough to grant us an extra four hours a day, I can at least draw comfort from the fact that video games can still teach me valuable life lessons.

Oh, and the fact that Chip’s Challenge 2 has to be released to the public someday… right?

When The Bubble Bursts

Here we are at the end of March.  Everything seems a little brighter lately, doesn’t it?  The weather is warmer, the birds are chirpier, and everything is covered in a soft yellow blanket of cheerfulness.  Wait, scratch that last part.  It finally rained last week.  (If you’re not from the South of the US, that was supposed to be a pollen joke.)

When art imitates life...

I was feeling pretty despondent over my loans this past week.  A quarter of the year is gone, which means just 9 months left to pay off $10,382 + interest (because I’m not good enough at math to calculate that out. My loans have two different interest rates.)  As I said in my post two weeks ago, that means a monthly payment of $1334.  That’s a $373 increase from my original ideal monthly payment.  It went up because a) I failed at math and forgot to factor in interest each month, and b) I didn’t even hit the $961 ideal payment for January and February.  Thus the despondency.

However, I’ve found support in some unlikely places.  Those of you who are new to this blog likely found it because of Facebook.  A friend of mine posted a link to my blog, which then got reposted by someone else, and reposted again by a third person.  After that I lost track of the link, but 276 of you viewed my blog in two days (as compared to 250 views in all of February), so I figured I’d struck a nerve.  If you’re reading this now, thanks for sticking around.

I also found support from the Huffington Post.  In the last week, they’ve posted at least three articles on student loans.  One article stated that the average 20-something carries $42,000 in debt, and 50% of us so-called Gen Yers have educational loans.  Another said that the federal student loan debt is over $1,000,000,000,000.  Yes, that’s 12 zeros.  There is over 1 TRILLION DOLLARS in student loan debt in the US.  A third article discussed how a large percentage of student loan borrowers don’t fully understand their loans or repayment schedules.

Those articles astounded me.  If you didn’t just click on the links above, you should.  Go read those articles and tell me how you feel about this issue.  To me, it’s all saying the same thing- Gen Yers got duped.  We were told to go to college to improve our career prospects, but by the time we go out of school, the job market had bottomed out.  Now we’re stuck living at home again, working part-time or minimum wage jobs, and running on the never-ending treadmill of loan repayment.  It’s like the home ownership crisis all over again, except instead of 60-year-olds being forced out of their homes, it’s 20-somethings being forced out of their first apartments.

I’m going to level with you.  I didn’t get angry over the foreclosure crisis.  I felt like, at some base level, those people who bought too much house should have known better.  I know, I know- it was a terrible thing to think, and that actually very few people who lost their homes were being extravagent, but there it is.  I did feel sympathetic for those who lost their homes, and I even watched my neighbors get foreclosed on. (Note- I lost all sympathy for the neighbors after they threw a wild party and trashed their house on the eve of their foreclosure.  After that, I was glad to see them go.)  But the entire thing didn’t touch me personally, so I didn’t get angry.

I am angry now.

The student loan bubble is about to burst, and you’d better believe that I’m standing right in the splash zone, along with a few million others.  The federal interest rate program is about to expire, and the rates on our loans are going to skyrocket.  People are going to be defaulting and declaring bankruptency right and left, and setting the tone for their entire financial future based on one decision they made when they were 18 years old.  I don’t know about you, but that seems really, really unfair.

So yes, I am angry now.  But probably not for the reasons you think.  I’m not angry that I got tricked into taking student loans, because I don’t think that I did.  I read all the information, I understood that I would be paying interest on the loans, and that interest would accrue even while I was in school, and I understood that the only way my loans would be forgiven would be if I a) paid them all back, or b) died.  (No joke- I have a promissory note that says it just like that. “Full repayment or death.”) 

No, I am angry because other people got tricked into taking loans that they didn’t understand.  Student loan providers preyed on my classmates like credit card companies used to before colleges got wise and started banning representatives from their campuses.  But more than that, I am angry that even though we all endured four years of hard work, we can’t even earn enough to repay the chances we were given to succeed.  A college degree doesn’t mean as much as it used to, but  it sure costs a heck of a lot more than it used to.  That’s some twisted financial logic right there.

So here’s what we do.

1) Write to your congressperson.  Tell them to not let the federal student interest rate program expire.  Bust out some fancy mathematical skills and show them how much extra we will have to pay (hint- look at the articles linked above.  $5,000 over a 20-year repayment plan for a student who borrowed $23,000.  That’s almost 20% extra in interest alone.)  Casually remind them that college students are allowed to vote, and perhaps thrown in that said students know that congressional members are up for election every four years.

2)  … I don’t actually have a number 2 yet.  I mean, the obvious thing is that we all get really angry, pool our resources, take over the job market, and pay our loans back early in protest.  Rob the lenders of their cushy interest rates.  But since most of us are struggling to find a job that will cover the rent, let alone minimum payments, this might be a crazy plan.

Or is it?  Think about it and let me know.

Until then: I present End of March figures.

End of March

$10,980.16 (end of February balance)

– $658 (initial March payment)

+ $42.83 (March interest)

– $290 (Secondary March payment)

———————–

$10,074.99 (End of March balance)

My goal for April is a balance under $9,000.  And to beat Amanda.  This month I paid $948.  I’m still waiting to hear her final payment.  I bet I won, though.

Recalculating

My ideal loan balance as of March 12, 2012: $9,083.42

My actual loan balance as of March 12, 2012: $10,341.01.

I think it’s time for some rethinking of the plan.

No, I’m not giving up.  I’m just recalculating.  This time with the help of a financial calculator I found on Google, since we all know about my track record with math-related subjects.

Based on my current loan balance and interest rates (4.75% for two groups, 6.8% for the other two groups), my monthly ideal payment is now $1335.28 for a final pay-off in December.  My monthly income is around the $2,000 mark each month.  My fixed bills (ie, things that can’t be changed) are  $839 each month, plus another $400 in flexible costs (ie, things that change each month).  That leaves me with about five hundred dollars to make up each month if I want to hit this new goal.

Take a deep breath, because the belt is about to get tighter.

Here’s what’s going to change:

1. Retirement and vacation funding: drops to $10 each per month.  I can’t drop these completely, since Roth IRA contributions are tax-deductible at the end of the year and the vacation fund gives me something to look forward to, but reducing the payments into each saves $100 a month.

2. Entertainment budget: drops from $50 each month to $20 each month.  That’s still enough for one fun thing each month.  Plus, I can get free books from the library and free video games from work.  The hardest part will be breaking myself of the “I really want a new book/ DVD/ CD/ t-shirt” habit. Doing this saves $30 a month.

3. Grad student loans: $50 payment each month drops to $0 each month.  This will probably come back to haunt me later when those go back into repayment, but right now that’s $50 a month that I can use elsewhere. This saves $50 a month.

4. Savings budget: drops to $5 a month.  I have an emergency fund in place in case the bottom drops out of my employment (or some drunk totals my car again).  The savings fund was mainly going to support my tendency to go over the $50 entertainment budget each month.  Cutting that out saves $10 a month.

5. More work hours.  This seems like common sense, I know, but it’s an actual possibility for me.  I’m not getting all the hours I could be at my various jobs, which means I’m not getting all the money that I could be.  Therefore, I am going to attempt to schedule myself a bit better.  This means setting aside specific work hours each day, and not letting the “I work from home therefore I can move work around” mentality convince me otherwise.  This also means not letting others try to pull me out of the office before I’ve finished work.  And maybe turning off the internet so I can focus. Doing this can add up to $600 a month.

All in all, that will save me an extra $190 each month.  If I can shave off a few dollars from other places, then I can probably make that an even $200 a month.  If I can succeed in better time management, then I can easily hit my new monthly goal.  I just have to stay focused.

Oh look, a kitty.

These are not the novels you're looking for.... but that might be the Golden Snitch you're seeking.

When people don’t click on Like or Share, I worry that no one reads this blog.  When I worry that no one reads this blog, I obsessively check my view stats page.  When I obsessively check my view stats page, I get sucked into the internet vortex.  When I get sucked into the internet vortex, I start posting more pictures of cats.  Don’t make me start more posting pictures of cats.  Click a button below.  Any button.

In Which I Throw Down The Metaphorical Gauntlet

In every movie set in medieval times, it’s a certainty that someone is going to issue a challenge to someone else by hurling a metal-plated glove (gauntlet, for the uninitiated) in the challengee’s general direction.  In the good movies, the challenger slaps the other with the gauntlet.  In the mediocre movies, they throw it at the challengee’s feet.  In the bad movies, this scene gets left on the cutting room floor.  But in any case, when the gloves come off, you know it’s a pivotal moment.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached that pivotal moment.

If you’re interested, Amanda’s blog can be read here: http://artofcombiningrandomness.blogspot.com/

See?  I told you this could get interesting.  (Hit the like or share buttons if you agree.)

January Part II/ February Part I

It’s time for the long-awaited January Part II post.  Since it’s February 1st, this entry is also the February Part I post.  I’m going to try to write this with a minimum amount of snark, but I’m not sure how that will turn out.  You see, I just got a letter from my car insurance company.

Let me begin by saying that I generally adore my car insurance company.  The insurance coverage is excellent, the road-side assistance program is great, the people are pleasant to deal with, and they are the sort who will call you the morning after an accident just to check on how you’re doing.  The company also happens to be my bank.  This makes things easier when paying my car insurance bill.

Which brings me back to the letter I just got.  It seems the company figured out that I’m no longer a student.  They also figured out that I was a bit of a drain on the company’s bank accounts in the last two years (Not my fault.  For more on that story, click [here]).  Therefore, the company has decided to raise my premium by just under $200.  This translates to a $16 a month increase.

That’s kind of a big deal to me.  There’s not a lot of wiggle room in my budget.  Most of my money goes to paying bills, and those recipients like it when they get their full amount.  If they get shorted, they send me poorly written letters expressing their dismay (An actual example from a collections agency last year: “Credit Comes from Character, Prompt Pay Maintains It.”  First of all, it’s “prompt payMENT.”  If you’re going to passive-aggressively threaten me, at least do it properly.  Second, is said payment maintaining my credit or my character? Be clear what’s at stake here.  And third, hey thanks for making me feel like scum because I’m broke after a CAR ACCIDENT.  That’s a great way to ensure I’ll send you a check.)

To get back on point here- that $16 a month has to come out of somewhere.  The only place I could find was the vacation fund contribution ($20 a month, give or take).  Sorry Harry Potter World- you’re going to have to wait until next year.  The first causality in belt-tightening is magic.  There’s poetic justice in there somewhere.

Ok, now for the fun part.

The January End Tally

$11,530.13 (amount owed at beginning of January)

+ $307.41 (accrued interest)

-$250 (January payment)

———

$11,587.54 (end of January balance)

Yep, that’s right.  My loan balance went up $57.41 this month, even though I sent $50 more than the minimum payment ($199.13, for those who are interested). Can we hear it for the evil genius that is compound interest??  What, no one here is a fan? Yeah, me neither.

As you know from my last entry, I fell a bit short on January’s payment.  The good news is, I was able to start February off with a bang.  A big one.

February Beginning Tally

$11,587.54 (beginning of February balance)

– $660 (initial February payment) (BOO-YAH!)

+ $??? (accrued interest)

– $??? (end of February payment, hopefully)

—————–

$??? (aka a balance under $11k, and one very happy blogger)

Stick around.  February has 29 days this year- anything could happen.  Oh, and while you’re here, go ahead and click Like, Share, Follow, or post a comment.  Thanks!