An Artist In Debt

January Update

Loan Total : $40,262

Heyo! I sort of fell off the wagon on keeping things updated. The end of the year got hectic and this got put on the back burner. 

Still slowly making my way down. I am proud to say that in 2016 I knocked down over 10k, which is awesome! Although this amount is amazing, I still wish that I was closer to the $0. At the beginning of 2016 I was so eager to have everything paid off in a year, but it just wasn’t a reality. 

I was hoping that I can make it a reality for 2017. In order to do so I need to make around $3,000 a month payments, which is not feasible at all. I’ll probably get close, but I’m hoping that I can have it down to at least $20,000. Maybe I’ll get lucky with the lottery ;)

Loan Total : $ 44,669.60

A huge lack of not posting. I’ve basically been in a repeat pattern of work - sleep- work - sleep, repeat, repeat. I’ve been enjoying the work, it’s just been so busy and have had a lot on my plate. 

On the plus side...I’m slowly knocking away at my loans (woot woot!). I recently got a raise and a bonus at work and have putting almost all of it to my loans. I’ve just developed the mentality that any surplus money I get is loan money, so I don’t miss it as much. I’ve also been making some side money at selling my art. It’s not a whole bunch, but again, every penny straight to the beast. 

I realize I still have a really long way to go. At the rate that I’m going, I should reach my goal in about 2-3 years. Not the one year I planned for originally..but I’ll get there.

Loan Total : $49,039

Long time no update! I definitely have dropped the ball on this blog. Still paying down the loans, just not documenting it as much. I’m hoping to change that soon :)

On the plus side, my loans are still slowly going down! I’m super excited that in a couple months I will have paid off 10k. That’s exciting, but also frustrating that that much money is going to my loans. 

One day...

Loan Total : $51,045

It’s been a few months since I’ve updated. Life and work got pretty busy. On the plus I was able to pay off a huge chunk though with my tax refunds! It’s pretty awesome to see the amount jump in a few months.

Although I was able to pay off a huge chunk, I got a bit burnt out with this pay off journey. I was at the point where I was putting every extra penny I had towards my loans. Anything I spent that wasn’t bills or loans I felt super guilty, and started getting really upset with the financial situation I was in and back to the rollercoaster of student loan emotions.

I got to the point where in the last month I didn’t want the stress of it anymore so I started spending more...which still led to guilt, but man did it feel good to spend money. 

I’m now trying to find a better balance, one where I am still making my payments, but at the same time have a little extra money on the side to spend once a month and to save (another thing I wasn’t doing). Really the only way to achieve that is to let go of the idea that my loans will be paid off in a year. It’ll be a bit longer of a process, still wayyyyy less than the 20 years if I kept paying the minimum.

I also am doing away with my goals. I wasn’t staying true to them and it added an additional amount of stress of something to keep up with. I am planning to channel that extra energy into doing more artwork to go along with posts.

I thought this would be a fun idea to fill up a couple blog posts. I didn’t have the best experience with my financial aid department at my college and thought it would be fun to share some of the “good times”

Let me just say this is one of many stories from my financial aid department. I had been enrolled in school for a couple quarters at this point so I was still learning the ways of financial aid. I got a notification that I needed to visit them.

After finally scoring an appointment with my financial aid adviser (they took their lunches from 9-5 it seemed, seriously they were NEVER there) I was finally able to meetup with my adviser. She informed me that apparently I had taken out too much on my first loan and had a surplus amount. I asked her what I should do about it. She said that I could either request it in a check to help pay for books and other items needed for school, or I could send it back. She suggested that I send it back if I was doing okay financially. I was doing pretty well so I agreed that sending it back was the best choice. Just out of curiosity I asked her, how much extra was it. Her response “I can’t tell you that”. I was a bit taken back. I basically repeated what she said in question form “You can’t tell me that?”. She responded with “no”.  I didn’t know what to do.  Since I was  still pretty new to school (and student loans)  I just assumed that it was how it worked. So I just went with the flow and said “Okay.”

It wasn’t until a few days later that I brought the conversation up with my roommate that I learned it wasn’t right. She told me that they should have told me the amount. I didn’t think it was as much of a big deal, and also had no idea who to talk to about it, so I just let it slide.

I look back now and really wish I had taken action. It’s quite assumable that my adviser sent it back, as much as everyone loves an edgy plot. It doesn’t make the matter right in her not informing me about my financial loan information. More worry-some, how often did they take advantage of students who were uneducated about the financial process.

I decided to do a bit of changes with the blog. First I re-named it to something I feel fits me better. By trade I am an artist, so I thought why not mix the two! 

Also, I made a website to compliment the blog. I will continue to blog here on tumblr, but I hope to grow the blog more as I learn new tips, tricks and stories along the way. 

Be sure to give it a look!

Doing this blog definitely keeps me motivated, but there are other sites out there that keep me motivated on staying on track.  

Student Loan Hero 

I’ve mentioned this site a couple times since I started the “great payoff”. The site is a great reference for refinancing choices in questions. The feature though that I find more useful is their newsletters. Even if refinancing isn’t a choice that’s right for you, they send out great articles about other student loan payoffs, ideas for additional income, and additional apps and sites that can help you along the way.   

Penny Hoarder 

Although this site isn’t specifically about student loans, it’s a great site for frugal living and saving tips. With the extra money from these tips, you can put it towards your student loan payoff!   

Tuition.io 

This site can be motivating, and discouraging at the same time. It’s a site that allows you to hook up your student loans to a visual graph to show your payment progress. There’s also a feature that allows you to see if you are able to pay extra, how much sooner your loans can get paid off.  Another awesome feature on this site is it allows friends and family to give you money that goes directly to your loans (birthday gift idea!) If you have a lot of student loans it can be discouraging at first, but once you start to see the graph going down it feels so awesome.

Loan Total: $54,757

Finally. I’m finally starting to make a dent. When I was adding up my loan totals for my post today I was seriously grinning from ear to ear. The efforts are paying off, literally! 

I semi-successfully completed my goals from last month. I sold an old phone I had that wasn’t working and collected some additional electronics to put on eBay. Post wise I was one short, but I was happy that I got some of the posts ideas out of my head and on the screen. 

Goals for April 

-5 blog posts. Even if they aren’t being read as much, writing them out keeps me motivated. 

-Plan out schedule for extra $$. I work full time as a motion artist, so I’m trying to do some extra work on the side with my art skills. I have a couple things planned, but really just set up everything last time and didn’t really follow through with it...blog post to follow up pho sho. 

Since I’ve gotten a lot of the big steps out of the way, I’ll be focusing a lot more on writing posts and sharing some other tactics I’m using a long the way of paying off my loans. 

The other night my husband and I were planning on making spaghetti for dinner. I thought we had the noodles, and we had all the other ingredients, but alas I was wrong, and we were noodle-less. After going through an intervention on eating out, I looked in the fridge and saw we had leftover rice and veggies. 

A fun fact about me is I love food. I look forward to every meal, especially when it’s something that’s my favorite. Rice and veggies, definitely NOT at the top of my list.

Still, I didn’t want to spend money when I technically had food in the fridge. So I heated it up and threw some sriracha ranch dressing that was in the fridge on it. The weirdest combination, ended up being super tasty! The ranch definitely added the flavor, but it made it fine to eat. 

I keep trying to remind myself that not every meal is for pleasure and food really is just fuel. Minus the ranch, a bowl of veggies and rice is pretty decent fuel.