Today I have a guest post from Jacob, a personal finance blogger at DollarDilligence.com, on a topic that I know many of my readers deal with – student loan repayment.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I logged online and took a look at how much of my student debt I had paid off in the previous year. It was next to nothing. I hadn’t even missed any payments. To start the year, I had around $26,000 in debt and after 12 months of payments I hadn’t even gotten to under $25,000.
I couldn’t believe it.
My problem was that I was on an income-driven repayment plan that limited my payments to only 10% of my income. My interest was still accruing and I was barely putting a dent in my principal – a common problem with these kinds of plans.
That’s when I decided I needed to make a change. I completely changed my lifestyle and repayment plan, and vowed to repay my debt within the next year and a half.
I’m happy to say that I was successful, though it wasn’t fun. How did I do it? Continue reading