A Guide To Repaying Your Student Loans: Fill & Download for Free

Student loan forgiveness would create the moral hazard. While it would allow millions of students to start on a clean slate with their lives, it can lead to a lot of long term problems. While it is one thing to demand Congress to stick to their promise of forgiving loans for those worked in public jobs, another thing to randomly wipe out all loans.I took loans for my B-school education in Boston. To repay my loan I had to give up my startup, start work at a corporate and living in a small place long way away from work. The first 1 year I put up most of my salary on student loan repayment and repaid it all in that year. Granted, I was fortunate in some ways. However, my classmates who earned the same or even more just stuck to the minimum payments. When a student loan is forgiven in total, it would make all those who gave up everything to pay back the loan, look totally foolish. It could do a long term damage to good behavior.It would also make students really pay less attention to costs of college. After student loans became common in the past 4 decades, colleges jacked up their price as their buyers became less price sensitive. They built obscenely large buildings and bought super expensive ball players, while simultaneously paying less attention to what they were supposed to be doing — training minds. More than half of the employees at a University don’t teach anything all — they work in administration and management.You spend a lot of time comparings deals for your laptop. However, you don’t look at the sticker price for college as these tend to be on loan. Forgiving loans would just make students even less sensitive to price and give all the more reason for colleges to jack up their prices.Overall, both education and healthcare have to come back to first principles — a doctor who diagnoses and a teacher who guides. Instead, both of the systems have become monstrous, with more focus on realestate, machines, overheads and all unnecessary things. If that is fixed, things would become so cheap that most might not have to take loans at all.

Make more than the minimum payment: This is the most straightforward way to pay off your student loans faster! Set up auto-pay on your student loans and manually make at least 1 extra payment per month, if possible. You may want to look into the debt snowball and debt avalanche strategies to determine which loans you should apply extra payments to first.Use cash windfall: Tied into #1, anytime you get extra cash (lottery, inheritance, etc.), put those toward your student loans.Take advantage of income increases: Whether you get a raise or a new job, if your income increases, apply the extra money (or a percentage of it) toward your student loans.Refinance and consolidate your student loans: Refinancing typically decreases your interest rates, making more of your repayment money go straight to the principle.You can get a full list of ideas here: The Ultimate Guide to Paying Off Student Loans Faster

The Ultimate Guide to Paying Off Student Loans Fasterhave been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the financial institution.TIPS: If you have bad credit and struggling to cope financially i would recommend you reach out to George Gibbs , He is a computer guru & programming expert who i have used his services and also referred a lot of family members to as well. He is effective and 100% Legit.1. Make more than the minimum paymentEffectiveness Level: Medium-HighThis is one of the easiest ways to reduce your debt. Just take the payments you have and add extra money to the payment. You should already have payments set up, so anything extra goes straight toward your principal.One easy way to do this: Set up automatic payments with this extra amount added in. This takes any indecision out of the equation and makes it harder for you to change your mind, too.2. Do the math and find your payoff dateEffectiveness Level: LowDo you know exactly when you’ll be free of student loan debt? If you answered no, you’re not alone.But figuring out your payoff date is always a good place to start when it comes to managing debt. Why? Because once you know this date, you can work on moving it closer.3. Consolidate and refinanceEffectiveness Level: HighRefinancing your loans is one of the best moves out there for paying off student loans faster. The goal of refinancing is to decrease interest rates, meaning more of your payments go toward paying down your student loans.When you refinance multiple student loans, you’ll get one consolidated loan with one monthly payment. Alternatively, you could refinance just one student loan for lower rates. You’ll likely only want to refinance loans where you can actually decrease your interest rate.4. Use a cash windfallEffectiveness Level: MediumCash windfalls come in various forms. These can include lottery winnings, an inheritance, a settlement from a lawsuit or insurance claim, and more.When you suddenly get a chunk of money from these sources or others, you might be tempted to spend it. It’s so tempting that Bankrate reports an estimated 70 percent of those who get cash windfalls spend all of it within a few years.So instead of spending it on stuff you won’t even remember, use it for paying off student loans faster.5. Take a job that offers forgivenessEffectiveness Level: Medium-HighCertain jobs, like public service work or teaching, may offer forgiveness for part or all of your student loans. This is great because it’s basically free money. All you have to do is meet the requirements to get your student loans forgiven. See our guides to Public Service Loan Forgiveness and teacher student loan forgivenessfor more details.There is one potential downside: You need to meet all the requirements and complete the full term of work required to get any forgiveness.Since these forgiveness programs are typically used in conjunction with income-based repayment plans, your payments will decrease but interest charges will accumulate. If you wind up ineligible for forgiveness for any reason, you’ll be stuck with greater interest charges.6. Apply your raisesEffectiveness Level: HighHopefully, you work at a job where yearly raises are part of the compensation. But what do you actually do when you get a raise? You could just get more stuff — a bigger TV, a better car, or more exotic vacations. But why not put a chunk of it toward student loan repayment?We covered this in our post about how to start investing, but the same strategy could be used with student loans. Just take one-half of your raise amount and put it straight toward student loan payments. This means either upping your automatic student loan payments or transferring the money to a savings account.7. Avoid repayment programsEffectiveness Level: VariesYou might be focused on lowering your student loan payments; this makes a lot of sense if you’re struggling to repay your student loans. But if your goal is paying off student loans faster, you probably want to avoid income-driven loan repayment programs.Why would you want to do this? Well, almost all of these federal student loan repayment programs are geared toward decreasing payments by lengthening the term of the loan. This means it’ll take longer to pay off student loans.8. Trim your budgetEffectiveness Level: Medium-HighIf you want to find more money but can’t easily increase your income, decreasing your budget is an option. While it may sound extreme, some have trimmed their budget drastically. The key to success: You only have to do this in the short term. It’s not for the rest of your life, but rather a short period where you’re focused on paying off student loans faster9. Earn extra money with a side gigEffectiveness Level: MediumAlong with trimming your budget, you could try supplementing your income with a side gig.Side gigs come in all shapes and sizes. You could offer a service online, such as tutoring, editing, or design. Maybe you could finally clean out your closets and sell your used clothes. Or, as this TV producer did, you could start your own cookie-baking business.10. Be strategic about your debtEffectiveness Level: MediumThe first step to repaying your loans faster is to add more money to your student loan payment. But how you apply that extra money could make a big difference, too.For all student loans, it makes the most sense to pay off the highest interest loans first. This is called the “debt avalanche” method, where you pay just the minimum on all but the student loan with the highest rate.You might be best off targeting private student loans first, too before focusing on federal student loan repayment. Repaying private student loans often means higher interest rates and less flexible repayment terms compared to federal student loans. Private loans can have variable interest rates as well, meaning your rate could rise over time.By targeting the loans with the highest interest rates first, you’ll save the most money on interest.11. Take interest rate reductionsEffectiveness Level: LowWhile you can cut down on the cost of your student loans and get some big wins with the strategies above, smaller savings can add up, too. One of them is the interest deduction from signing up for automatic payments.Many servicers offer a 0.25 percent interest rate deduction on federal student loans for enrolling in automatic payments. While this isn’t a ton of money, it’s not bad to get a few bucks back.12. Take full advantage of tax deductions and creditsEffectiveness Level: MediumIf you’re paying off student loans, you’re likely eligible for the student loan interest deduction on your federal taxes. You may deduct up to $2,500 on your taxes each year for the interest you pay on student loans.While you must meet other requirements, generally a lot of student loan holders in their 20s will be eligible. That’s because this deduction can be taken even if you don’t itemize your taxes (which many young taxpayers don’t do).Tax credits can be even more valuable than tax deductions. In general, a $2,500 tax credit will save you more money than a $2,500 deduction will.13. Realize student loans aren’t ‘good debt’ to keep aroundEffectiveness Level: LowYou might hear chatter about “good debt” and “bad debt.” And while student loans are generally a good investment based on increased income potential in your lifetime, along with some deductions, it’s not good debt to keep around.The “good debt versus bad debt” debate is really about how that debt helps you increase the value in something. In this case, it’s the value of a salary.But while taking out student loans is a good idea, letting them sit around forever isn’t. Interest charges stack up the longer you wait to repay loans.Of course, you can be strategic when figuring out how to pay student loans, but merely calling student loans “good debt” as an excuse to drag out repayment isn’t a good idea.14. Pay every two weeksEffectiveness Level: MediumAnother popular extra payment strategy for student loans is to make a student loan payment every two weeks.Now, you don’t need to pay double the amount of your monthly payment to make this work. Instead, here’s the common strategy:Split your monthly payment in half.Make a payment of that amount every two weeks.By doing this, you’ll make a full extra payment over the year. The real strength of this strategy is that if you receive a paycheck bi-weekly, you shouldn’t feel the pain of paying the extra amount.15. Visualize the future without student loansEffectiveness Level: LowWhile this isn’t exactly a repayment strategy, it can help you find motivation to get rid of your debt, especially if it’s causing a lot of stress in your life.Here’s an easy way to start your visualization. Think of the one thing you hate most about having student loans. Maybe it’s that you can’t afford to go on a vacation, or maybe you have to eat rice and beans to scrape together enough money to pay your bills. Perhaps you drive a crappy car that breaks down all the time.