Hey guys, it’s time for another student loan update!
This month, I’ve seen good progress on all of my student loans. I’ve hit the $1,000 threshold on one of my Sallie Mae loans, my College Ave loan is still doing it’s job, and my federal loans aren’t accruing interest.
TLDR; As always, here’s a video version for your convenience!
For this month, my recent weekly payment to my Sallie Mae loan #4245 brought the amount down to $800. This signals that this loan will be paid in approximately 8 to 9 weeks, or in 2 months. The progress on this loan is steady, so there’s not much to talk about it.
The same goes for my other Sallie Mae loan. My auto-debit is still paying it on a monthly basis and has continually reduced the amount by around $100 every month.
For my College Avenue loan, the amount is now at $3,300. I’m paying $60, which is slightly above the minimum, every month. I thought about switching it to a weekly repayment schedule, but decided otherwise because I couldn’t handle adding another weekly payments in the meantime.
I have to finish my Sallie Mae #4245 first before I go attack on College Avenue.
For my federal loan, it hasn’t been accruing interest because of the CARES Act, which pauses all interest accrual and debt collection for federal student loans. While that is a good thing, I failed to check on these loans on time!
I initially thought that I had setup auto-debit every month, so I can chip off the principal balance. But what I didn’t see was that all auto-debit will be PAUSED during these times.
So, 3 months worth of payments weren’t made on these accounts. Luckily since there are no interest accruals, I can make payments to it as if I didn’t miss any monthly payments.
And that’s what I did.
I paid 3 months worth of minimum payments, and focused them on just 1 account. That account was the lowest amount on my federal loans, around $1,300. By making a payment of $75, I reduced that to around $1,225.
Since auto-debit is paused, I will be doing manual electronic payments instead every month. While that may be a hassle, it is the best move I can do to make sure that I am taking advantage of this student debt relief benefit.