Consolidating My Student Loans

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Now that I have received all the student loans that I am going to receive I have begun the process of looking into consolidating my student loans. I have Subsidized Stafford Loans, Unsubsidized Stafford Loans, and Grad Plus loans with two different lenders. I’m not sure if my lenders would send me one bill each for all of my loans but I know when I log into my accounts they calculate the payment separately for each loan. Consolidating my loans will make paying back my loans simpler.

My primary reason for wanting to consolidate my loans is to take advantage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. In order to qualify for this program you need to have your loans in the Direct loan program. It is my understanding that even if you have already consolidated your loans you can switch to the Direct loan program to take advantage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This program will forgive remaining debt after 10 years of eligible employment and qualifying loan payments. That could end up being a great deal for me. The only downside is that the forgiven debt will be considered income which would result in a large tax bill.

Once I have completed the loan consolidation process I will provide an update on my experience getting my loans consolidated.

My Cost for School Supplies- $0

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The best way to save money on school supplies is to not buy any. Other than books I haven’t needed to purchase anything for law school this semester. I’ve previously posted strategies for saving money on books and using these strategies I was able to get the two books I needed fairly cheap. These books have the added advantage of being great resources for studying for the bar and when I’m finished with them I should be able to sell them for close to my purchase price.

The only other thing I need for school is pen and paper and those are both things I get for free. When I have to print something to turn in I have to pay three cents a page but other than that I won’t be spending any money for school supplies. I’m sure many of you have other school supplies you must have but you should analyze whether you really need them before you make the purchase. This is a cost of education that can most likely be reduced. If I needed a loan I could find out more at studentloans.gov.

Another way that I have reduced my overall spending on schooling is by taking classes online. I won’t spend anything on the classes that I take online, since most of the material is available on the computer. The books that go with the course are mostly unnecessary because most of the information is available through the school‘s online portal. I don’t even need a pen and paper, as I can take notes on my computer while I watch lectures remotely. The fewer supplies I have to purchase before attending class, the more money I will save in the long run.

It is even possible for me to earn my entire degree online, which could help me to cut down on my expenses even further in the near future. In fact, online universities allow me to save on things like fuel and parking, since I don’t have to leave the house to attend class. If I choose to further my education after completing my current degree, I plan on doing it exclusively online because of the cost benefits. Master’s and doctorate programs are quickly becoming more abundant online, giving students who want to work full time while attending school the chance to do so.

How Much Have You Earned and What Do You Have to Show for It?

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The first chapter of “Your Money or Your Life” is about making peace with your past involving money. The two exercises they suggest you do to help accomplish this is to figure how much money you have made in your life and how much you have to show for it.

The easiest way to figure out how much money you have made in your life is to look at your statement of earnings from the Social Security Administration. They should mail you a statement each year. If not you can contact them to get a statement. This statement will show your earnings by year since you started working. It won’t show any earnings that weren’t subject to social security tax but it should reflect the vast majority of earnings. Once you add up all the years of earnings from the statement plus any earnings not reflected on the statement you will have a fairly accurate total of what you have earned in your life. This total might surprise you. I have made a little less than a quarter million dollars in my life. That is actually very little considering I am 41 years old. Doing this step makes it clear that I need to earn more money.

To figure out what you have to show for all these earnings you figure your net worth. You take all your assets(bank accounts, stocks, real estate, personal property, etc.) and add them together and then you subtract your liabilities(mortgage, student loans, credit card debt,etc.) to arrive at your net worth. Hopefully this will be a positive number. My net worth is negative due to my student loans but disregarding them I would have a positive number.

Now that you have both figures you can compare them. There is a good chance that your net worth seems awfully small compared to what you have earned. You can’t change the past but you can improve from here on out. If your net worth didn’t seem very small compared to your earnings than you are ahead of the game and following the steps in the book should be a snap. Next week I will post a summary of the second chapter.

Google Adsense Revenue Going Down?

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Since we have decided to do roundups for the Frugal Blog Network on a monthly basis now I am going to post on blogging related topics on Sundays now. I know many of my readers are bloggers and I hope these posts will be of at least some interest to the non-bloggers.

I have noticed the amount I receive per click from Adsense is way down this month. The amount I receive per click is a little less than half what I have been receiving. Maybe this is due to the economic downturn and advertisers are just bidding less on clicks. The big drop has been on one of my other blogs Bank Bonuses. Considering banks and financial institutions are struggling it would make sense that they are paying less for advertising. That site also went from PR2 to PR0 and I’m wondering if that had any effect.

I’m considering cutting down the number of ads I have on the site on the theory that only higher paying ads will be left and more people will click on higher paying ads. The other thing I’m considering is blocking the sites that I think are paying less per click through the competitive ad filter. Has anyone tried doing these things and what were your results? Is anyone else receiving much less per click than before?

I’d really like to know. Thanks.

Setting a Self-Imposed Deadline

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Since returning to school for the fall semester I have not had a job choosing to make all my money online. The idea was that with my free time I could increase my online income to the point where it completely replaced my job income. I did make some initial progress in increasing my income but still fell well short of replacing my job income.

This semester I only have class one day a week. This results in me having even more free time than I did last semester which should translate into getting more done. I’ve found the opposite to be the result. I’m getting almost nothing done because I don’t feel any urgency to do anything. I am a habitual procrastinator and don’t usually start working on a project until I feel the pressure of a deadline. I all have day to get things done now I just keep putting them off until I decide to do them tomorrow. When tomorrow comes the cycle repeats itself.

My idea to solve this is to give myself one month to make a dramatic improvement in productivity or I’ll get a part time job. I’ll continue to do my work online, I would just do it around my job schedule. Maybe with this deadline I will force myself to be more productive.

If anyone has any suggestions, tips, tricks, hacks, blog posts, etc. on how to increase productivity, increase motivation, or reduce procrastination I would like to hear about them.