My Student Loans
June 15th 2007 12:54
For fun last night, I went to this site to see how much my Federal Student loans would cost me. I put in $15,000 as the amount (it’s really slightly above this) and 6.8% as the interest rate, and said over a 10 year span. I almost cried when I saw the results. By 2017, if I only paid the minimum, I would have paid over $5,700 in interest!!! This doesn’t include the private loans I have that are around 8%-9% interest!
I can’t decide if it was a good thing I looked at this calculator or a bad thing. By looking at it I’ve added 6 extra months of stress (I would have waited until December when I graduate to look at this stuff instead). Although, I did learn that even if I only pay an extra $7.38 a month on it (to bring it to an even $180) that I could knock six months off. I hope I’ll be able to pay even more than that each month as well.
This actually isn’t truly accurate, because all my Stafford loans are at different interest rates right now. Only one (the most recent one) is at 6.8%. From my old school, those are all variable, and they wouldn’t let me consolidate them when I did another one (for some reason they let me consolidate ONE loan). I think this was a case of the “preferred lenders,” but that’s a whole other post.
Oh, there’s nothing like reality slapping you in the face. Hard.
I can’t decide if it was a good thing I looked at this calculator or a bad thing. By looking at it I’ve added 6 extra months of stress (I would have waited until December when I graduate to look at this stuff instead). Although, I did learn that even if I only pay an extra $7.38 a month on it (to bring it to an even $180) that I could knock six months off. I hope I’ll be able to pay even more than that each month as well.
This actually isn’t truly accurate, because all my Stafford loans are at different interest rates right now. Only one (the most recent one) is at 6.8%. From my old school, those are all variable, and they wouldn’t let me consolidate them when I did another one (for some reason they let me consolidate ONE loan). I think this was a case of the “preferred lenders,” but that’s a whole other post.
Oh, there’s nothing like reality slapping you in the face. Hard.
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