For anyone that has a Scotiabank student loan and graduated in 2019, this is now the time that our 12 month grace periods are running out and the loans are becoming payable. For those of us that love to budget and hate debt – this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. This is when we can finally solidify our exposure going forward in terms of how much we need to make and how much we should be allocating towards repayment.
In the interest of transparency and information-sharing I am choosing to document my debt repayment in this series. This is the first real “milestone” in this line of credit repayment journey. I hope to do a quick update every month in order to document my progress.
So I recently received a letter in the mail notifying me that my 12 month grace period for repayment will be ending soon. I was in the Dual J.D. Program at the University of Windsor and the University of Detroit Mercy. I got two J.D.s (American and Canadian) which also means that I paid for each (in American and Canadian dollars) which is equally as brutal.
I finished my program in August 30, 2019 (later than usual because this is when the American degree was conferred). So September 2020 is when my grace period for repayment will end.
According to my notice which is dated June 24, 2020, my balance as of this date is $105,917.13 CAD and the interest rate is 2.95%. Accordingly my minimum monthly payment based on the 10 year term is $1,020.17. This is in line with my own estimation using loan hero’s monthly repayment calculator.
If you’ve read my previous posts about my student loan you will know that my loan closed at $159,259.67 once everything was said and done (just a little bit under the $160,000.00 limit0. From this time (around May 2019) until July 2020 I was able to get this balance to $105,917.13. I will not lie, this was not an easy feat. I have had windfalls from my mortgage which I was able to throw into this loan as well as a large tax refund as I still had unused tuition credits to carry forward that I applied to my loan.
I look forward to documenting this journey and I am really hoping that this really doesn’t take me the full 10 years because I am truly determined to pay this off as soon as possible while also living my best life. Stay tuned for updates.