Student Loans

Using Mint.com to cut through the financial static

Using Mint.com to cut through the financial static

photo credit: ArtemFinland As the year comes to a close, it is always nice to take a look at the finances.  Although I love tracking our finances using Microsoft Money, the level of detail doesn’t always provide a clear look at the underlying picture. For example, our net worth is approximately the same as last year, but this is due to losses in our retirement accounts, which I am not overly concerned about.  Since we are in our early 30′s, we make regular contributions and reallocate our holdings twice a year.  It’s pretty much on auto-pilot. But what about...

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We’ve met our savings goal – almost!

Our stimulus check arrived last week. I just transferred about $540 to our emergency fund to bring it up to $5000 again. This was our first Dave Ramsey goal that I talked about in a previous post.  So it’s not official yet (since technically the money isn’t in the account), but it’s in the process! It feels great, but I will feel better about it once I have secured another part-time work-at-home job to bring in income over the summer (I currently tutor online, and the hours will be decreasing soon). I don’t want to have obtained our goal...

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Setting goals for April

I feel like February and March kind of flew by.  I know that I have been sick, but I also feel like I have been busy.  The problem is that I am not sure exactly what I was busy with.  There’s all the daily things that have to do with life in general, but this is the first time in awhile where the fruits of my labor are not really tangible. This is why I’ve decided that it is time to set some general goals for April.   It’s going to be more like a long list, but I...

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Our financial story – student loans – part 2

Today, it’s time to focus on my student loans. I was very fortunate to not have to take out any loans for my graduate studies – a small but sufficient graduate stipend combined with my husband’s income helped us out.  However, I spent 5 years completing my undergraduate studies (I am a geek who did a triple major) and my last year was expensive. In total, my federal undergraduate student loans totaled roughly $15000, which included an unsubsidized loan for $1450. I also had to take out a private loan in my last year for $6000. Even while in...

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Our financial story – student loans – part 1

I thought that student loans would be a good place to start documenting our financial journey – as I am bringing my graduate school career to a close, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at what our education cost us. Today, I will start with my husband’s student loans. Starting off, he had federal undergraduate student loans totaling roughly $18400 (these days, that’s not bad for 4 years at a private college!) which he began paying in September of 2000. In September of 2002, he went to an accredited school for massage...

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