Question and why?

I saw this an ad on facebook this morning for this
 http://www.womanaroundtown.com/sections/living-around/the-fleecing-of-young-america-the-s-m-cabaret-slaves-of-sallie-mae-student-debt-stories-with-class-and-sass

Its a show and one that is suppose to be making fun at Sallie Mae and student loan debt.

I was looking at this and wonder?? If we all are suppose to go back to school and get an education and get a worthy job and have a good life. Why is it that so many of us is in this situation?? Is the American population of students, middle aged people and others so stupid that we all missed something about what we did?? I mean why are so many people in this debt to begin with. At what point of our second education did we not notice the huge amount of debt building up?? Or did all of us not notice there was no jobs at the end of that education journey??? How did some of us not know and there is a lot of us here. How did we not know that there is a odd limit on how much we can borrow?? I know odd we should of known  this at some point when we decided to go back to school. How did we not know this?? I know I"m not alone in that I did well in school but ran out of money and did not graduate!  They say read all the material. Well once you read it once I know many did what I did. Glance over the material the remaining years. Did we miss a little sentence somewhere along the way that was hidden in the documents. And I wonder after all this time. Did I sign off on all those loans?? Really I"m going to look back because I truly do not remember.

I read, research and find that there are millions of students, young and old that are in this same situation. We all started on this journey to better ourselves, to get educated so that we can be worthy of a better paying job so we can pay our bills and have a little bit of a better life. Why is it that instead we are finding ourselves in a worst situation than what we started out in???

Where do we go from here?? I"m not sure.

I do feel like I was scam out of 4 years of my life. Being suckered into believing that I was going for an education, only to have the school and government take advantage of this and use that so called money for their own evil agenda. After all the payments I'll be paying go mostly for interest. And if I just pay the monthly balance these loans will never get paid off. Where does all that money in interest go??

I think we all fell down the rabbit hole of Sallie Mae and the likes of her. We are all swimming in the Wonderland of student debt hoping to wake up one day and find it was all a bad weird dream.

Paying the interest on my loans.

Ok the time is here to start paying Sallie Mae and American Education on my loans. I have been sending AE 50.00 a month for awhile now. It is the required payment and does little to pay off any principal. In fact all it does is pay on the interest. I"m heading into the same boat with Sallie Mae this month. I"m mentally prepared in a way. Knowing that this does little to pay down any of the loan balance. But its a start to keep the collectors out of my hair and off my phone and out of my mail box.

I"m still learning the ways of ebay. So far I do manage to make 80-100.00 extra a month. This process is slow going so far and I do not want a household of stock to wait and get rid of.  I just do not have that kind of space. I have found that sourcing is great fun and I need to keep keep to a budget when out and about looking for items to sell. I'm putting myself on hold for a few weeks so I can get rid of some of what I have.

I also signed up for a flea market in a few weeks. Just to get rid of some I do not want to list on ebay. Some of the things that did not sell on ebay as well.

I sold a few books on Amazon also. Not much money to make there yet. I"m considering FBA but still researching to see if this is something that is for me and if I can make more money doing this. Those who do FBA seem to love it as far as  I can tell. But most sellers are seasoned sellers also and have a little to send out than I do right now. I also do not have the extra funds to go out a few times a week or once a week in search of good books and games to sell. I'll be learning the ways of Amazon slowly this summer in addition to ebay.

I'm also going to look into selling arts and crafts online. Etsy, ebay, facebook what ever. I went back to school to learn Graphic Design.  So I might as well take the little bit I did learn and put it to work. I'm going to dabble and learn. From working on my drawing skills, to making jewelry, to making dolls. Which I have made dolls in the past. I'm excited to make a few more again. I'm going to take some painting classes and find ways to sell my zentangle art. Either on cards, note books, t-shirts stuff like that.

And I work full time. I am off in the summer. So that is going to be my time to do all this stuff I need to work on. So far finding a summer job nothing is striking me as something I can work with. I'll know if something pops up.

So yea not great progress. I hope in a year I will see results in my efforts. I think it will take awhile to get up and going on any other money making venture, or job to see any results.

The key is not to give up. Never think this is not a possible thing to do.

There is no magic pill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmZmwmDUacU

The above link is to a show that Dave Ramsey does.  He talks about some viewers who write in about their student loan's. He say's how stupid these loans are. I have to agree. We was told that we needed an education to get ahead in the world. That with out this we will be no one and get no where.

Looking back I wish I could of believed in myself enough to trust that no matter what happen to my family that I would be OK. That I could of taken care of us if I had to. That if God decided to change things I would be able to handle it.

The only thing I can do now is to tell others what not to do. Or at least try.

We all do make mistakes and it happens. Like I keep saying I can only go forward I can not go back and take back what has been done. I am paying the price in many ways for this. But I am also learning a few things also. School was not a total waste of time. But if I had not been in such a hurry or wanting to prove myself I might of taken the time to figure out if this is something I could do. If I had been smart I would of saw that our finances could not handle me going back to school. I would of done something else instead. But that was then this is now. I'm learning something new to make me an extra income. I'll continue to learn new things to better myself. I just will not be paying or taking out loans for my education from now on.

I laugh that one day I"ll declare I'll have a youtube degree. Or a internet learned degree. lol. Wish I knew then that this was possible without doing what I did in taking out those loans. I still can learn, find ways to live life. Its just going to have a black cloud over us for awhile.  A debt that is a lesson all in itself. One that I will never forget. One I will advise younger people about when they are thinking about their own lives.

Its all good to live a good life, have a nice house, good car, nice clothing and do the things you want. But at what cost will it be?? When in truth if you work hard enough at anything you still can accomplish those things in life you want. Who says that working a general kind of job is useless??  Its what you make of that job that counts. If you are McDonalds and doing a good job and can move up in the company than do it. If you are sweeping floors and you pay your bills than do that. If you own your own company and enjoy the profits than that is what you are suppose to do. Life it to short for regrets.

Student loans these days is stupid.  And when you do not make enough money to get that extra education then you need to be smart and make the decision not to go back to school until you can afford it. It may never happen. But you may find out that life had something else planned for you.

I see this now.

Live life even though there is a dark cloud called debt hanging around

As stressful as this debt I made up my mind to move on and live life in any way I can. I have made it a goal to read at least 1 book a month. I have my list on the right there for you to see. This is something I can enjoy and its does not cost a lot. Used books are cheep and plentyful and I can find books for free at the library and online. So endless amounts of reading. And any real book I read I can list it on Amazon when I'm done. Making a little extra change then.

There are other things I"m looking to do as well. Doing as much as I can on the cheep. Staying home and worrying about what am I going to do and how to pay the bills is not going to do me any good. Clearning my head, getting away from it for a bit does better. I can take a new look at things from time to time and assess my situation.

Life does not stop with debt. It just changes what you can do for awhile. But there is a whole world of things to do and enjoy that does not cost a lot.

Yes this debt is always on my mind. I would love nothing else but to get rid of it ASAP. But right now its not the case. But I get up each morning, my feet hit the ground and I"m off to work, or doing house work or working in the garden, finding ways to make my life better.

Sometimes God hands us a challange. Could be it was because I made such a wrong choice in my life. But its what one does with those decisions that makes us a better person somehow. We have to have bad times to appreciate the good times I think. But if I had to do this over again I would make a diffrent choice, stand up for myself and be more confident in who I am and how I would of taken care of myself and my family.

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.

Called Sallie Mae Again! But it was productive this time I think,

I called Sallie Mae and Lo and Behold they had my income based repayment information but its not processed!!! Its sitting there doing nothing. So I had her do something with it.

While I had her on the phone I asked a few questions about how do I go about paying my loans if I want to pay extra on them. In my previous thoughts if I made a little extra money I could put extra just toward one loan at a time in order to pay them off. Not all at once. If I can keep the general payments low with the IBR then I might have a chance to save up money here and there by other means like a extra job, ebay, dog sitting ect to put toward just one loan at a time. The answer to this is yes you can do this!!!

A little trick I learned today as well. First do not use a debit or credit card. Pay from a checking account or a savings. So what I would do it open a checking just for this purpose. Keep little money in it so just in case of identy fraud you will not loose a lot. It happens just be safer than sorry. Make it your student loan account and just use it for that. Then if you do this online or talk to a person. Tell them you want to make next months payment. So this ways your extra payments goes toward the principal not the intrest!

These are small things they do not tell you that you can do when you have all those loans clumped into one. By tacking one loan at a time you have a better chance of paying off your loans sooner with less intrest in the long run. At least in theory it can work.

Now that I have that question answered all I need to do is see if my IBR goes though and I can see where my non budget is at now. I can see how much extra I will need to make in a month to do this. And I"ll have an idea of how to move ahead.

The end goal is to get out from under this debt asap. Breaking it down into smaller amounts and one loan at a time is easier than looking at the whole picture.

Salie Mae and they did not get my request??

Now I have to call Sally Mae again. I put in the request for the IBM they did a small deferment and now I got a even bigger bill that showed up in my inbox. What the heck is up with that. I never heard If I got approved or not for the IBM. So back on the phone with these people to get this settled.

Sad part is its not like I do not want to pay on my loan. I just cant pay the amount they want. Just need it lowered to a resonable amount. Then if I can I'll pay extra on it.

Never in my life do I want to deal with a goverment loan or Goverment anything again. Its like we do not exhist and they only collect the money off of us until we die. Actally if I have it my way I"m paying off those suckers as soon as I can.

Moving forward, now a step back. This is nuts.