IBR and moving on.

I finally got approved for my IBR!  Now this is not the best solution. But for now it will take the edge off of  what I need to do. A 600 or 700 payment is down to 120. Not the best for my budget but it gives me something to work with at least. So the challange is to make these payments every month for 10 years. Yikes!

For now I'm looking at my short term goal here. Making that 120 extra. Lets face it this is only going toward the intrest on these loans. It does nothing to pay down the amount. But it will keep my credit in check. I hope. As it is its not great. But that is another story for another time how this affects the credit report.

So this step in this process is done. It did take a few months and I did have to call them to get it moving. Now I"ll have to reapply each year. Lovely just like filing the tax's. Something a person just hates to do. But we do what we have to right.

Like I said before I have to find a way to make the extra money to do this. And I said I am exploring ebay. That is my first thing other than my job that I"ll be using to make extra cash.

And I realize that in order to make things budget out in my life I have to work on my over all budget. So while I'll have that monthy payment I will be paying off some other debt which will then also lighten up money to use toward my student loan debt in the next year or so. I have a car that will be paid off, a credit card I need to pay off, catch up on 2 other bills. Its not much but it makes a diffrence in the monthly budget in the end. Also getting a car off my insurance and that will help as well.

I'll be working on getting though the summer time. I"m laied off for the summer so our income is not as much during that time. I'll be finding ways to make extra money. One ebay and I'm considering things like pet sitting, another job, making crafts and selling them, home parties ect. I'll be exporing anything that I think I can fit into my life as it is now.

After this summer I'll be saving up any extra money to put toward one single student loan. Say I have a loan for 1000.00. If I can save up that amount I"ll pay it off. Even if I save up 500.00 I'll put it toward the principal on that one loan. I'll start with the smalest loans first and work my way up to the bigger ones. Yes we can do this. You have to call and find out the best way to do this. What I was told last you have to send the amount directly out of your checking account. So the ideal thing is to open an account just for this purpose. Any online buying and paying things I have an special bank account for. I keep 0 to less than 100.00 in it at all times. Because if I get hacked into I"m not losing much.

So that is that for now. Sorry to be silent for so long. It took a long time to hear back from Good old Sallie Mae! And American Education about the IBR. So now we can move on. Like I said its not perfect but its better than having that huge payment looming over our heads. But lets face it the rest I'll have to take care on my own. Sometimes you have to find the little unknown ways to take care of these things. Its a challange I"m ready for how about you!

Until next time.