Undergrad: $862.60
Law School: $50,230.89
Since the primary purpose of this blog is to chronicle my debt-reduction journey, what better place to start than with a status report? My undergrad loans will be paid off as of August 2, and believe me this has been no easy feat. My original balance was $19,055.90, with a couple years of interest added on (which accrued while I was in law school and not paying them). I don't remember exactly what the balance was when I started on this repayment race, but I know it was over $20K. Not by much, but definitely over. On 09.07.2011, I made my first $1000 payment (which went entirely to interest. ouch!), and that loan will be gone in a little under 2 years.
This is really exciting for me for lots of reasons. First, I'm not sure who these people are that have good interest rates on their student loans, but mine (both sets) are at 6.8%. That's over twice as high as our mortgage and about 50% greater than my car loan. I'm not going to get into a rant over the student loan market (although I certainly would like to), but I just wanted to illustrate that paying off these student loans as quickly as possible makes the most financial sense for our family.
Getting rid of my law school loan is going to be a much longer term project. My initial balance was $53,752.52 when I started paying on them a year ago. I graduated from law school in December 2011, but I took advantage of the grace period (and am now only paying the minimum payment) in order to dump more money into my undergrad loans. Now I don't agree with everything Dave Ramsey has to say, but the guy's on to something with the whole "debt snowball" thing. As someone who's about to have something paid off, the mental boost you get by doing such a thing is huge. Seriously, on August 2 I may throw myself a party. After I make that last payment on August 2, I'll be putting pretty much all my money (over $1500/month) toward the law school loan. According to my calculations, I should have it paid off by April of 2016. Then it'll be BABY MAKING TIME!! :)
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