Another student loan update for the July to August cycle. Just a couple more weeks left and College Avenue will be out of my hands!
(Here’s a video for your convenience!)
College Avenue
My Payments
I’m getting excited with this loan because I am so close to paying it off! Last update, this balance was at $2,100.82. From July 18 to August 15, I’ve reduced that amount by $827.85. So as of this writing, my College Avenue balance sits at $1,272.97.
I’m close to hitting the 3-digit level for my College Avenue loan and that is just amazing. Here’s the breakdown of my payments every week from June 18 to August 15.
On my last update, I made the last payment for that cycle on July 11. The next payment starts on July 18 and I made my usual $140 payment.
Same thing happened on July 25 and August 1, $140 weekly payments were made, which brings my total payment so far to $420. Not a lot happened during this week, but thank God for automatic payments because I don’t have to think about it too much.
On August 8, I made 2 payments, my weekly $140 and an extra $40. I was able to make some extra money on surveys, so I cashed out and used it instead on my student loans. The total now is $600.
Then on August 15, I made another 2 payments, my weekly $140 and an extra $100. This extra money was from extra cash that I saw on my checking account. Since I always track my spending and net worth, I found an extra $100 that I could use that won’t “ruin” my numbers. I decided to use that for my student loans instead, and that brings my total payment for this cycle to $840.
I mentioned on my previous update about the best way to post extra payments on College Avenue. I found that it’s a lot easier to make an extra manual payment on top of the automatic payments rather than changing a specific week in your payment schedule.
Anyway, $840 is a big amount, but it is for a good cause. That totally helped remove a big chunk in my College Avenue balance.
My Interest Accruals
If you look at my interest accruals, you can definitely see a bigger decline.
Last update, the interest accruals were in the $3 range. Now, for the first payment on this cycle, the interest accrual was at $2.80. Then the next payment on July 25th, the interest accrual went down to $2.63. And down to $2.44 on July 31. And down to $2.26 on August 8. And finally, down to $2.02 on August 15. So the total interest for this cycle is $12.15.
In just one cycle, my loan’s interest accrual went down by $1. It’s still in lined with my calculations of a weekly reduction of 20 cents per payment. From here, the accruals will just keep going down.
Weeks Left to Payoff
With the $1,272.97 loan balance, it is estimated that I will be paying off this loan in 10 weeks. Compared to my previous update, this number was at 16. 5 weeks, or payments, have only passed but I shortened it by another 1 week to the timeline, all thanks to that extra $140 this month.
With the new estimate, I’m fully paying off this loan by the last week of October, which is 24th, instead of the previous estimate of October 31.
EdFinancial
For my Federal loans at EdFinancial, it still sits at $11,343.14. No change here yet because payments are still paused at the moment.
And fortunately, the payment pause has been extended to January 31, 2022 and that will give us borrowers an extra 4 months to prepare after the previous end date of September 2021. I’ve made an article about this big news, and I’ve also laid out my plans during this final extension to the payment pause.
The balance as of August 15, 2021 for my entire student loan is $12,616.11!
I’ve hit the $12K threshold, and it won’t be long till I break $10K. No crazy changes in my repayment strategy. I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing for my student loans — make consistent weekly payments and add extra payments whenever I can afford any.