Student Loans…that’s a BAD word! My husband started college in 1983 and took out student loans for nearly a decade. Back in the day (a long time ago), we did not have those consolidated student loan. I believe at one point we probably had about seven different student loans with payments totaling $900 per month or so. Some people might think that’s not bad - after all, you can’t put a price on education. Please!!!!
To those people who say you can’t put a price on education - think again!
My husband got an Associates degree and was within 13 credit hours of a Bachelors degree. We were in a tight spot and needed some money, so he decided to go ahead and get a full-time job with his degree. I can tell you one particular job interview he went to - it was with Radio Shack. They offered him a full-time job as a Field Engineer for…hold your breath…$6.00 per hour! Granted, this was in the late 80s or early 90s, but still…when you have student loans totaling $30,000 you have to realize that somewhere in there a mistake was made.
Anyway, that’s the background on our student loans. Of course, in addition to that, we had credit card debt at the time. If you want to be able to pay off debt faster, why not enroll in a community college and take half-time college credit hours (it’s about 6 credit hours). Our student loan payments at this time is $550 per month, but because my husband enrolled in school half-time, he was able to defer the loans. Only one of the loans still accumulates interest, but that is only about $30 per month, so we have been paying that so the loan won’t get larger.
So do the math: student loans at $550 per month were deferred because my husband went back to school half-time. Instead of paying $550 per month, we pay $30 per month and pay the extra money to t he credit card debt. Once the credit cards are paid off, he will continue to go to school half-time so that we can pay the loans off faster.
Now I know some people would say they don’t want to go back to school, but my husband enrolled in a Physical Education class and Tennis class - nothing hard. In addition, when he took classes for one semester, it deferred the loans for one year - not just one semester. So really, he only has to go to school half-time every other semester in order to defer those loans. This has been a big help in our being able to pay off our credit cards faster.
Everyone’s situation is different, so you will need to contact your student loan lender to find out the terms of your loan and if it can be deferred, but it doesn’t take long to do and you’ll get ahead faster in the long run.
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