Student Loan Project: 2nd Month Update
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Another month since I shared our progress with the student loan project. We have one student loan between us and its our only non-mortgage debt left and its time to focus on paying it down faster. Right now regular scheduled payments paying around $150/month.
I'm using any after tax revenue generated from My Financial Reviews to pay down the student loan faster. The idea here is that money is sent out almost as soon as it comes in. No temptation to spend it or save it for another goal. Last month was a small start – we paid an additional $85 to the account. I'm contacting some current advertisers on Couple Money to see if they'd like to advertise on my other site. I'll offer a big discount if they sign this month. It'll be a win-win for everyone.
Bumping Up the Student Loan Payment
This month will be bigger, not so much from advertising income, but from the state refund we received. Yesterday we sent in a payment for $250. Happy to see that number go down a bit. I'm working hard on getting some advertising deals on My Financial Reviews to keep this up.
Update: Our federal payment came in this morning and another student loan payment (this time $750) has been scheduled. An extra thousand towards the student loan this month feels great! What's nice about the extra payments is that it's pushed back the next required payment until later this year. Don't worry we're still going to continue our payments every month, but should our income suddenly drop, we have a bit more wiggle room.
Thoughts on Paying Down Debt
I'd love to hear from you about your financial goals this year. How many of you are paying down debt? How is it going so far? What has been the biggest challenge?
I’m still slowly chipping away at my student loans and have paid off both private loans so far. Right now though, I’m focused on my car loan. So far, so good.
We did the same thing with paying off the car loan first. Glad it’s going well so far.
Elle,
Such an awesome plan! I ran a guest post on Budgeting in The Fun stuff maybe a month or two ago. I called the Circles of Financial Growth:
http://www.budgetinginthefunstuff.com/circle-financial-growth/
You are using the income circle (from the site) to pay down a debt which will lead to EVEN MORE income freed up to build another circle or pay down another debt.