Hey guys, BIG NEWS for this update!
This is my 13th update regarding my student loans, and I’m really happy to say that I have paid off another Sallie Mae loan!
TLDR; As always, here’s a video version for your convenience!
On my last student loan update, I was only a couple of hundreds away in paying off Sallie Mae #4245. And on September 6th, I’ve decided to make an early payoff… again!
I’ve learned my lesson here tbh. If you’re using the Sallie Mae mobile app, you won’t be able to do a full payoff in any of your student loans. They just don’t give you that option.
However, if you do an early payoff in their website, they do the entire calculation for you. They will add how much interest has accrued since you last paid + the remaining principal balance on your loan.
No need to guess or make an over-payment for me!
What’s interesting was then after doing the last payment on #4245, they sent me to a congratulations page with a YouTube video on it. Watching that video was actually fun. It was by this DJ who had finally finished paying off his Sallie Mae student loans.
(now, i’m thinking of dancing to that song when I pay off my debts to Sallie…)
Anyway, I was able to make that extra $60 in payment because of the money that Digit had stashed away for me. Throughout the year, Digit has saved me around $360 until I stopped using the service just recently.
Now, it’s obvious where I’m going to put that extra stashed money: Sallie Mae #6489. I’m going to pay that extra $300 straight to the loan, so that I can save more interest in the long run.
Since I made $100 weekly payments to my previous loan, I’m going to divide by 4 the minimum payment I’ve been making to #6489, which is roughly $25. Therefore, my weekly total payment will be $125.
I’ve made changes to my auto-debit for this loan. Instead of auto-charging me the minimum amount, I’ve set the amount to $125. This way I have 1 week less to worry about making manual payments.
The only thing I don’t like right now in Sallie Mae is that they don’t allow weekly automated payments. They only auto-debit on a specific due date. In my case, it’s every 11th of the month.
This presented me a problem since 11th doesn’t always fall on a Sunday (the day I will always do a weekly payment). So to fix that, I’ll only be paying on Sunday if the 11th falls on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. If it falls on Thursday and onwards, I will defer my payment to the next Sunday.
The next months will be an interesting journey for me as I work my ass off into paying back Sallie Mae.
On the other hand(s), my CollegeAve is at $3,269 as of this writing and my federal loans top my debts chart at $11,800+. I’m happy though that it has finally dropped below the $12K mark, but it’s still a lot so I’m gonna have to keep hustling if I want to get those numbers down quick.