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.

You tube education

I just wanted to put this out there. I am doing some research on how to sell my art. Because one reason I went back to school is to learn how to do this! Ha. Ok no degree but I'm still learning with out school.

I am finding some good information some bad information on you tube lately. I think once I figure this all out and if I do manage to create an income I'm making myself a you tube degree. lol. Between that and the internet I am learning more than what I did in the 4 Years I spend at the Art Institute online division!

If I only went this route in the first place I would be better off. Big old 60,000 degree down the drain when I could of gotten the same education for nothing. Yea I'm feeling the "If I only Knew then what I Know now" thing. lol.

Things happen for a reason. I am sure my big old mistake going back into the world of education was not that big of a mistake. But lesson learned there are just some things you can learn on your own and you will do just as good or better down the road.

Most of all just because path one to a better life did not pan out, life seems impossible right now. Do not give up on your dreams, vacations, and other things in life. You can not possibly stop living because of the debt created by going back to school. The only thing you can do is work on a plan, stick to it and make the best of it. Save other wise for the things you want to do. A few dollars here and there and I mean a 1.00 here and a 1.00 there will add up in time. Get a budget in place and work on it monthly. Nothing even a huge life changing debt is not impossible to over come. It will just take time and hard work.

Credit card payments.

I talked to my credit card company this weekend. Not fun but enlightening all the same.  I figure hey I need to get them to stop calling for awhile at any rate. So we will see if they do. The girl said they  would. lol.. But one needs to do this from time to time when owing people money and have to make arrangements to work toward paying off that debt. Sometimes its just not as easy as it seems when you are limited in what you can send. 

But looking out into the future if I pay off this card, the car that will free up some money for student loan repayment. But we may have to purchase another car in the future as well. So there is always that possibility that payment will linger in the debt pool for a few years yet. We do have to get back and forth to work still. 

I"m still waiting to hear about my repayment options and if I was approved for anything. I hate waiting. 

Also went out on Sat and spent a little too much. :( Not that it was much at all but when one has debt to pay it was too much. I did have fun but really it was not a smart thing to do. That money could of went someplace else on the budget page. Lesson learned and we will be more careful in the future. I might have to stash away a little here and there in an envelope for special dinners and what not. The guilt is just too much when one does not plan for things like this. 

Also caught up on 2 bills. That does fill good. :)  

I picked up extra time at work this next week too. :) It does not happen often. As much as I hate going in on my day off I am. I will appreciate it when the pay comes in the mail. 

The end of the month is looking a little better. A few more dollars to stash away for extra down on bills. Hope I can keep this up for the rest of the year. 

Ebay has been a bit slow. But this is clearly something I will have to do daily and list stuff daily to keep up with it. So yes I think it will be a summer time thing when I"m not working. 

I"m also researching how to sell my art more too. I went to school I better put something I learned to work. I"m not great but there is a lot of people making money off their art that is not great either. I want in on that. 

Guess the week has been more productive than I thought. Here is to the next week. Lets see what we can accomplish toward the debt.  

Sallie Mae, IRP and now we wait.

I filled out the paper work, talked to a Sallie Mae representative and found all my information from Sallie in a spam box that I hardly ever check. I do now because some important stuff got sent there. :(  I had my mail switched back to snail mail so I know that I will get any important papers I need.

So now I wait to see  what the results are. I"m sure there is going to be more to this process like sending in pay check stubs or income tax information or something along those income lines. I'm still sending in payments to the one bank that has 2 of the loans.

I have to bring something up that all of this has caused. Something one does not think about when going back to school in order to get an education and find a good paying job. I never thought about what if  I did not finish or graduate and what would I do??  To me that was not an option because I have started school before and quit before and I knew this would be my very last chance. And here I am no degree and a large loan and it has caused problems in my life that I never dreamed up. It has upset my marriage in ways that I never though something like this would do. And it will take a long time to get things back on track and right again. Or my marriage or life may never be right again. I do not know only time will tell. Right now the mere mention of money, bills, vacation or anything that concerns large amounts of money is off topic or we tread lightly. The future as we know it is uncertain in ways that I never though it would be.

While I work on finding a good solution to the current problem there still lies a much larger problem at the end of this rather large bill. Lessons learned that I am passing onto my daughter so she does not make the same mistakes I did.

Right now I have worked up a small budget and I realize it will chance from month to month. I have to keep on top of it as much as I can. So far its working and its hard but its has shown up where our money is going so that is a good thing. We both are aware to take advantage of any opportunity to make extra money when we can too. For now I'll have a savings for just school loan money until I can see what will work best for us. I think for this year I can stash money into the savings. I also decided to have another savings too for things that come up that we need money for. I have done this before and it does come in handy. So I"m working on building that up again as a safety net for us. I decided to work on a vacation fund too and find ways to take small trips on the cheep. We need to get away and I might end up calling in a favor this year or next spring. I have not decided yet. It all depends on how much a hotel room is and how many days we will stay. Gas prices also is something to save up for. Not to mention food. Its a small goal. Just something we need to do for our marriage, our sanity too. I know it sounds a bit crazy but I hope we can manage this one small thing.

So while waiting to hear back about the income repayment plan I am thinking of ways to divide up bits of money here and there to stick and stash into savings or change jars. Small bits of a few dollars here and there will add up.