Debt Diary 2: Five figure mark

As I am writing this I have just made a large payment towards my loan ($4,000.00) which has put me just under the six figure balance which I’ve been maintaining for the last few years. My loan closed for just under $160,000.00 so its taken lots of work to get my loan to this point. I had a fairly large tax return in 2019 and I saved a little but of it until well into the pandemic just in case I lost my job (or whatever else). I used some of that to make a large payment this month. The balance is now $99,917.13 and I’m really excited to continue on with this.

I have continued making $1,000.00 payments from each of my paychecks. Thankfully July was a three paycheck month (the best kind), so I was able to make $3,000.00 worth of student loan payments in July.

All I can say is don’t be discouraged by the balance of your loan and to just be diligent in maintaining your budget and tracking your money so that you know exactly what is happening and where you are in your debt journey. I know my balance is abnormally large but I try to be positive and to keep chipping away at it.

When I input my new balance into the monthly payment loan hero calculator (based on the 10 year term) my monthly payment is:

$963.00

When I calculate my month payment based on a 4 year term (more in line with my personal goal) my monthly payment is:

$2,209.00

This is not too much more than the $2,000.00 a month that I generally average in student loan payments.

So we are one third of the principal down at this point and I’m feeling hopeful that the end is closer than I originally thought.