My Debts

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Since the first step in reducing debt is calculating your total debt I added up all my debts. They are listed below with the interest rate and lender name.

Wells Fargo Private Student Loan

$1978.79

11.75%

Access Group Grad Plus Loan

$15,683

8.25%

Access Group Subsidized Stafford Loan

$8,500

4.75%

Access Group Unsubsidized Stafford Loan

$10,703

4.75%

Nelnet Subsidized Stafford Loan

$8,500

6.8%

Nelnet Unsubsidized Stafford Loan

$10,242.02

6.8%

Discover card

$1663.90

0%

Total

$57,270.71

None of the student loans has to be repaid until I’m finished with school. I’m paying off the Wells Fargo loan now because it has the highest interest rate. The next debt I’ll pay off is the Discover card because the 0% rate ends in August. After that I’ll start paying on the Grad Plus loan. The Access Group Stafford loans are consolidated but listed seperately now because only the unsubsidized one is accruing interest now. I’m saving a lot of interest by having the subsidized loans.

I’m not sure if I should consolidate the 6.8% loans in with my 4.75% loans when i graduate. I’m thinking if I leave the 4.75% loans seperate I could stretch out the payments on them since their interest rate is below what I can currently get in an online savings account. Unfortunately I will need to get one more student loan to finish my schooling. So my debt will go up before it starts going down. I am going to try and at least reduce the overall interest rate and have no debt other than student loan debt. If anyone has any recommendations on how to best pay off or manage this debt I’m interested in hearing them.

Reducing Debt on an Irregular Income

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I recently read a couple of blog posts about reducing debt that I found informative.

Reducing Debt-Where did we start? from Blogging Away Debt.  If you need an idea on how to start paying off your debt this post is very helpful.

A Step-by-Step guide to reducing debt on an irregular income from Grad Money [Matters]. This post was especially interesting to me because I usually have irregular income. The post tells how to budget and pay off debt on an irregular income. I still have to get $A + $B < $C but I should be there soon and will start implementing the budget then.

February Income

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These are my sources of income and my total income for February.

Online Income

$165.56

Ebay

$22.44

Surveys

$5.00

Mystery Shop

$12.00

Total

$205.00

My net income was negative $634.12. I’m able to do this now because I’m living on my student loans. This is the last semester I plan to use my loans for living expenses.

Expenses have been deducted from the totals. The figures here are net figures. My online income is higher than usual because I received my Adsense money this month. It usually takes me 2 or 3 months to reach the Adsense payout amount but I only post it when I actually receive it not when I earn it. None of the Adsense money was from this blog. I don’t have it here and don’t plan to,I’ll provide more details on that in a later post. A small amount of the Adsense was from my blog BankBonuses but the majority was from my website BankBonuses. I’m not sure why the website makes so much more than my blog when the website provides much less information and looks much uglier as well.

I didn’t make much money from surveys or mystery shops last month. This is not a bad amount of income for extra income but as my only income it isn’t too good. I also received my state and federal tax refund. I’m not sure if I should count them as income. Since I only count my net income the refunds probably should count because they were not included in my income previously. This isn’t much money but when I get a job all of this money can go to debt reduction and will help pay my debt off much faster.

Can I Be More Frugal?

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One thing about being poor and frugal is that most posts you see about frugal tips tell you things you are already doing or don’t apply to you. Hower you still come across a few new ideas now and then.

Worldwide Success had a post with 10 simple ideas to save thousands and The Simple Dollar had a post on 10 ways to save money this week. I decided to see how these would relate to my personal financial situation. I’ll list their idea and then my comments on it.
First is Worldwide Success‘s list. The title doesn’t really work for me. It is difficult to save thousand when you live on less than 10k a year.

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One Month Challenge Results

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I kept track of all money spent in February as part of the One Month Challenge. This wasn’t much of a problem for me because I normally track all my spending. That is one thing I picked up from the book “Your Money or Your Life”. Here is what I spent for the month followed by analysis of the categories.

Rent/Household

$442.89

Transportation

$183.57

Utilities

$81.12

Food

$66.92

Entertainment

$24.62

Debt

$40

Total

$839.12

My expenses were pretty reasonable for this month. The rent and household expense category is lower than normal because I used Christmas gift cards to make some household purchases. The transportation expense included the purchase of two new tires so this expense should be lower in March. Utilities should also go down with the arrival of warmer weather. Food will probably be about the same but I’m trying to shift more of this expense from fast food to grocery. Entertainment will go up in March. I have a friend coming in from out of town and I just started dating someone. I like keeping my expenses low but Tight Fisted Miser doesn’t want to become Lonely Old Hermit so sometimes I got to spend some money. Debt expense will likely be the same.