Balance Paid

Student loans are a fucking brutal thing to have to deal with, and definitely the bane of my generation.

College can be a good thing, under the right circumstances. What has happened though is that it grew too big and then with the government securing the loans for the various levels of higher education, it ballooned to absolute obscenity and they haven't looked back since. The managerial class was inserted into this mess and they've not allowed control to shrink, only increased their grip on the whole system.

I am fortunate in my career in that I had a direction I headed in college, completed it, got a job but started out with zero student loans because I paid it all off as I went. I first attended community college which is FAR less expensive than a big college or a university. This was an excellent starting point because it got me into the mindset of college without having ridiculous amounts of debt in case it didn't work out for me. After that, I decided to go back to a university to get a higher degree, knowing that it would come in handy later in life but I also wouldn't want to or be able to spend time getting it once we had kids. Man was that a good thought, because right now it would suck to be doing college classes!

All of that was a key driver of the various successes I've had in the professional sector, and has allowed me to do a lot of the things and job movement that I've been able to and even in interesting directions. With that whole process though comes student loans, and that's one of the most annoying and difficult aspects of it all.

I'm not one to skirt away from financial responsibilities, I pay my bills and work to reducing debt as much as possible. The predatory nature of student loans though in the United States is truly fucking appalling. It is one of the only forms of debt that I'm aware of that CANNOT be discharged in bankruptcy and they will dock someone's retirement benefits like Social Security in order to help pay it off! What the actual fuck? Assholes, truly!

Lately it is being used as a political tool, trying to claim that debt will be forgiven in exchange for votes. This is also a pretty fucked up scenario because that is clearly vote buying of the most blatant kind, which is certainly illegal. I don't think this has even a shred of financial soundness to it because it is yet another thing that kicks the can down the road and ruins my sons generations prospects of financial stability, adding more debt without forethought as to the negative consequences.

Trying to put my money where my mouth is on this end, trying to prevent my son having to deal with my financial issue, I've been working on paying down extra on my student loans whenever I work at my side hustle. This allows me to slowly chip away at the stupid thing, with hopes that the balances will be completely paid off in a few years.

I recently hit a great milestone with the whole thing! I paid off ONE of my balances in it's entirety! This felt absolutely amazing because the loans I've got are split out into a few different buckets for the different semesters I was at the school. The buckets each have different balances in them so when I make a monthly payment, a few dollars goes towards each loan which makes it challenging to pay off - the balances go down fairly slowly. Because of this, I've been working at my other job whenever I can and will take 50 or 100$ from that check and throw it at these balances to get rid of the damn things.

I've been focusing on the smallest balances first because those are the easiest to get rid of and after paying extra for a while, I finally got rid of my very first loan balance! This was such a good feeling. The monthly payments I regularly make now will get adjusted to put the money that was dedicated to those balances, towards the other ones and slowly increase the amount I am paying off each month. The amortization of the loans has gotten better that's for sure!

Working extra isn't always a good or enjoyable thing, but the purpose has been to help us financially and being able to reduce and eliminate loans and our overall debt burden is such a great feeling, and worth the sacrifice in my opinion!

What about you, do you have loans where you try to pay extra to get rid of the balances faster? Let me know in the comments!