May 2012 Weddings
tking1286
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
School Loans
So, when I got out of graduate school I tried to consolidate my federal and private loans. Unfortunately, it was actually cheaper to keep them all separate and pay them individually. Between all my school loans, I am paying almost $1000 a month. I even tried applying for the income based loan and it didn't even change the payment amount. The stupid thing is that loan doesn't take into account other bills we have every month. They just ask what you make every week and figure you make enough to pay that much. We are trying to reconfigure our expenses to help save money and pay other bills off in order to put us in a better financial situation for a house. I am just trying to find ways to decrease some of our bills. Does anyone had any ideas for dealing with student loans? Thanks!
Re: School Loans
The reason I have so many gray hairs at 26 is from my student loans! They are a pain in the butt to deal with and the only advice I can give is to call the customer service line and immediately ask for a manager or supervisor, anyone higher up than the initial person to answer. After I first graduated from college (4 years ago), I couldn't find a job that paid more than $8/hour and I definitely couldn't make my car payment and my student loan payments living on that. So one day I just called them, asked to speak to someone else and I explained my situation to them. Thankfully, they understand and were willing to work with me. We came up with a plan that I could afford and settled on that. Since then I've been able to increase my payments but it was a rough start. I find that doing this via phone and actually talking to someone is way easier than trying to figure it all out online. The thing of it is, I think those companies want to help people but get such a bad wrap because they appear all grinch like with just wanting your money. A lot of the times all it takes is to just ask.
As for decreasing your bills, the best way to do that is to start at the beginning of the month and write down every single penny that you spend, regardless if it is for a monthly bill or a coffee, write it down! This will show you where your money is going each month and let you know where you need to cut back. It's amazing how quickly those morning coffees or afternoon candy bars can add up. Also, look at your cable/internet bills. Do you really need all those channels? H and I don't have cable, we spend $8 a month on Netflix and that it's but we do have internet which is $40 a month but we'd prefer to have the internet access than cable because most TV shows you can watch online. Cell phone plans are another way that you can save some money. I recently decreased our GB usage on our phones from 4GB to 1GB and in the process we'll be saving roughly $45/month! Do you really need a smartphone or can you down grade to something less expensive. H and I hardly ever use our phones, except to text each other, so the change doesn't affect us any. Do you rent or own a home? If you own a home, or you rent but have to pay utilities with the company directly, check to see if they have a budget billing plan. We have natural gas heat in our home and in the winter time that can really add up. We've been on the budget billing plan since we first rented a home together 2 years ago, with this plan we pay $80/month all year. Some people think it is silly to pay $80 in the summer time when we don't use the heat but in the winter when bills are typically $200-250/month, the savings is obvious!
A lot of it comes down to your 'needs' vs. your 'wants'. If you can lessen the number of 'wants' you spend for each month and focus on the 'needs' it'll help greatly!
Spaklo has some awesome suggestions.
H & I did the exercise where we wrote down everything we spent for an entire month. It was amazing to see how much we were spending on groceries and still eating out all the time. Now we've dropped our grocery budget to $200/month and only go out once a week. A big help for us was our local Stop & Shop. They have these "Scan-it" guns where you scan your groceries as you shop. They've been a HUGE help in staying under budget!
I also take out my spending allowance in cash at the beginning of the week. Then once it's gone, that's it. That was difficult to adjust to, not swiping my debit or credit card everywhere, but it helps me stay on budget. We also do a good number of cheap date nights with a pizza and Redbox DVD.
Also I COMPLETELY agree that cable is unnecessary! We do the same thing, watching shows online or on Netflix. We actually watch less TV this way too!
We also have electric heat, so in the winter we are VERY conscience about our heating bill. It's amazing how much money you can save just turning your thermostat down a few degrees. If you have a programmable thermostat, that's even better! We manually turn our heat down when we leave for work and then back up when we get home.
I agree, Spalko has good ideas. We keep a Excel spreadsheet of all our expenses - basically our take home income minus any expense we have (bills, retirement savings, routine expenses). That way we know how much disposable income we have (or don't have, sadly!)
What payment plan are you on for paying your student loans? Right now H and I are on the extended payment plan, which extends the payments out as long as you can. (Still almost $2500 a month between the two of us, and that is taking 25 years to pay it back!). What we do then is pay an extra $250 each in principal on each of our loans every month - but if we ever have a month where we don't want to pay the extra, we aren't obligated to. Of course, this assumes that you consolidated everything to the federal direct loan program...when I consolidated our loans a couple of years ago every bank told me that pretty much no one private consolidates any student loans anymore, so I am assuming you are talking about federal?
I'd also consider an FHA loan for a house. H and I didn't have a very large down payment (only 3% I think). You'll have to pay PMI every month until you own 20% of the value of the house, but for us it was worth it since we didn't want to wait another 10 years to own a home.
Good luck!
I actually have federal and private loans. I tried to consolidate both, but it would increase the amount per month and give me a higher interest rate than I already have. I have been keeping my loans separate for the time being since the interest rates were too high. For the federal, I have four that are serviced through the US department of education. Those loans are under the income based repayment, which actually didn't even change my monthly payments. There really isn't much I can do for the time being for my private loans. I was just trying to figure out if the rates are getting any better for consolidation.
As far as budgets, we have been keeping track with an excel sheet as well, which is making us aware that we are spending a little too much.